Motorola once led the mobile phone market, with its chic flip phones like the Motorola Razr. But, like many of its contemporaries, the phonemaker lost out to smartphones from companies like Apple, Samsung, and a host of Chinese brands. Now the Chinese tech company Lenovo, which bought Motorola from Google in 2014, thinks the brand is prime for a big comeback.
“I would bet a paycheck that in three years we will be number three around the world,” Matthew Zielinski, executive vice-president for Lenovo, told CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Lenovo has “hyper-prioritized” Motorola, a decision that’s now paying off, he said.
Currently, the top two brands in the smartphone market are Apple and Samsung; a recent report from market intelligence firm IDC gives them 20.1% and 19.4% market share respectively. Two Chinese brands, Xiaomi and Oppo, come in third and fourth place respectively.
Counterpoint Research, another market intelligence firm, puts Samsung in first place with 20% market share, based on data up to the third quarter of 2023. Apple comes in second with 16%, followed by Oppo and Xiaomi.
While the firm doesn’t list Motorola in the top five, it does note the brand reported double-digit growth last year. And Motorola may be doing well in individual markets, coming in second in Latin America, according to publicly available data from Canalys and Counterpoint. The brand is in third in the U.S., according to Counterpoint.
What happened to Motorola?
Motorola’s market share peaked in 2006, when IDC put it at second place behind Nokia. That was the year before the launch of the iPhone, and since then the company has lost ground to Apple and Samsung. Critics point to Motorola’s slow reaction to changing consumer needs, whether turning the phone to a business device like the Blackberry, or the rise of smartphone apps.
Motorola then split into two companies in 2010: Motorola Mobility, which housed the company’s consumer electronics division, and Motorola Solutions, which makes telecommunications equipment. (Motorola Solutions has managed to turn things around under CEO Greg Brown due, in part, to a brisk business in public safety technology)
Google bought Motorola for $12.5 billion in August 2011, only to offload the company to Lenovo three years later for just $2.9 billion.
The current-day Motorola is now banking on foldable smartphones, bringing back its Razr brand. The latest version of the RAZR costs less than $1000, making it cheaper that Samsung’s foldable offering.
