UPDATE: Motorola has sent us a statement regarding today's news:
"Motorola Mobility continues to exist as a Lenovo company and is the engineering and design engine for all of our mobile products. However, for our product branding we will utilize a dual brand strategy across smartphone and wearables going forward using Moto and Vibe globally. "Motorola" hasn't been used on our products since the launch of the original Moto X in 2013."
Motorola is a pretty iconic brand name in mobile thanks to products like the DynaTAC, RAZR, and more. Unfortunately, that brand name will soon disappear.
Motorola COO Rick Osterloh has revealed that the Motorola name will soon be phased out by Lenovo, who bought Motorola from Google in 2014. Motorola isn’t totally going to go away, because Lenovo plans to use product names that include “Moto” as well as Motorola’s batwing M logo. However, new Moto phones will also include a prominent Lenovo logo.
“We’ll slowly phase out Motorola,” Osterloh told CNET, “and focus on Moto.”
To anyone that’s been following mobile for a length of time, this news is disappointing. Motorola and Marty Cooper were responsible for the DynaTAC, the first commercially available mobile phone. Motorola today may not be quite as huge as it once was, like during its RAZR days, but it’s still a well-known company that’s making solid Android phones.
That said, it’s understandable that Lenovo wants to use those solid Android phones to help promote its own name and unify its product lineup. While Lenovo has a large mobile business in some international markets, in the US it’s mostly known for its laptops. Whether or not this move actually does get Lenovo better name recognition in mobile remains to be seen.
What do you think of Lenovo’s decision to phase out the Motorola name? Does it upset you or could not you care less?
