Why Motorola Lost Its Way

In 1948, Paul Galvin's son Robert was elected as the executive vice president. The following year, Motorola dedicated a research site in Arizona to the study of solid-state technology. Motorola's transistor research allowed them to become the single largest producer of semiconductors in the world. (www.motorola.com). Robert Galvin's leadership, combined with the company's increasing focus on semiconductor technology, would take Motorola to new heights over the next several years. Motorola introduced pagers in 1955, designed for use in hospitals, and eventually captured a tremendous 85% of the market share (www.businessweek.com). When Paul Galvin passed away in 1959 (www.nokiainfo.net), his company had grown to include research plants in more than a dozen nations worldwide (www.motorola.com).
             The Motorola corporation continued to set trends with the introduction of the eight-track tape player in 1965 (www.aes.org). However, the short-lived success of the eight-track tape deck would mark the beginning of a drastic change in Motorola's production line. The next few years saw Motorola moving away from consumer electronics and into the high technology markets of commercial, industrial and government divisions. NASA used Motorola's technology in the late 1960's and early 1970's to provide communication to Earth from the Moon, over 240,000 miles away. Motorola sold its television production line, Quasar, to Panasonic in 1974 in order to focus more on semiconductor technology. The very same year, Motorola introduced its first ever microprocessor, which contained over 4,000 transistors (www.motorola.com). This microprocessor technology would prove to be crucial to Motorola's successes to come. .
             In 1979, just five years after introducing the 8-bit microprocessor, Motorola releases a 16-bit microprocessor, capable of completing two million calculations per second. By 1980, the company's net earnings had risen to over 180 million dollars, and the company was now working on electronic devices to be placed in automobile engines in order to reduce fuel consumption.