Motorola’s Fabled Name Will Disappear From Smartphones In 2016

Rick Osterloh, Motorola’s chief operating officer told CNET at CES 2016 that Motorola will be replaced with “Moto by Lenovo” with the iconic bat-winged “M” logo staying intact. This does not indicate that Motorola brand will be gone for big but instead, the company will attach the “Moto for Lenovo” tag on its high-end smartphones and will, in turn, conjoin its budget handsets under its “Vibe” brand respectively.

The full name will also persist in the name of the division – Motorola Mobility – now overseeing all of parent company Lenovo’s mobile operations.

“Brazil’s economy is not doing good, but we’re still gaining share in the market”, Yang said in an interview Thursday at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Future high end smartphones will carry a “Moto by Lenovo” mark, while more mid-range offerings will be branded under Lenovo’s Vibe label, according to CNET. As for the iconic Motorola “batwings” logo, it will still exist, though will eventually become less prominent. As a result of a poorer financial condition, Motorola was sold to Google in 2012 and to Lenovo nearly two years later.

Chinese smartphone market is expected to grow less than 1% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in the next five years, after years of massive expansion, says a recent report by the International Data Corporation (IDC). “Motorola” hasn’t been used on our products since the launch of the original Moto X in 2013.

But now Lenovo has announced that it will kill off the U.S. mobile phone pioneer’s name.

Lenovo is a huge name in PCs but doesn’t have almost the same weight in the mobile market.

“We’ll slowly phase out Motorola and focus on Moto”, Osterloh said. Today, with devices like the iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy series accounting for most smartphone sales and profits, it’s easy to forget how much power and influence Motorola wielded at the peak of its popularity. Enjoy taking a trip down memory lane before saying goodbye to Motorola forever. He also mentioned that the company plans to introduce Moto range of smartphones in places where Lenovo was famous, and Vibe range of smartphones in regions where Moto was famous. If the strategy works, it wouldn’t surprise us to see Lenovo drop the Moto nomenclature altogether sometime down the line.