The move comes more than a year after Lenovo acquired Motorola Mobility in 2014. In an interview with CNet, Motorola Chief Operating Officer Rick Osterloh said that Motorola’s high-end Moto line of smartphones and wearables and budget Vibe brand will live on for the foreseeable future. “We’ll slowly phase out Motorola and focus on Moto,” he said.
The aesthetic changes will be palpable. Future Motorola phones will still carry Motorola’s familiar “M” logo, but also feature Lenovo’s blue logo “prominently,” according to Osterloh. It’s a dilution that runs counter to Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing’s promise following the company’s purchase of Motorola in 2014. “It’s our treasure,” he said at the time. “We plan not only to protect the Motorola brand, but make it stronger.”
But the rebranding isn’t exactly unprecedented. The Motorola brand may carry less influence than it once did — in Brand-Finance’s 2014 list of the world’s most valuable brands, Motorola Mobility ranked 219. And the firm’s struggled to stay abreast of the competition in terms of sales. According to market research firm ComScore, the company commanded just 5.3 percent of the global smartphone market in November behind LG, Samsung, and Apple.
But the news isn’t all bittersweet. As was announced in August of last year, Lenovo employees under the Motorola umbrella will soon assume operations of the parent company’s phone business. Specifically, Lenovo intends to introduce the Moto brand as a premium line in countries where it’s well established, while the Motorola division will compete with low-cost smartphone makers in developing nations with its Vibe handsets. Osterloh told CNet that the Vibe line will likely extend to the U.S. in the next few years.
Editors' Recommendations
- With Hasselblad in tow, OnePlus must learn from Huawei and Leica’s success
- Every 5G phone announced so far so you can get a faster internet connection
- The best folding phones for 2021: What’s available now and what’s coming up
- Motorola One 5G Ace vs. Google Pixel 4a 5G
- Android 11 update: Here’s when your phone is getting a refresh