What happened to Motorola(chicagomag.com)
chicagomag.com
What happened to Motorola
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/September-2014/What-Happened-to-Motorola/
12 comments
Hmm. Maybe that's why Google kept about 600 or so out of 17,000 or more.
The streets of Hyderabad, eh? I can only imagine, having been there about 2 years ago. The level of construction and build-out is amazing. Where are all of the "trained" workers going to come from?
The streets of Hyderabad, eh? I can only imagine, having been there about 2 years ago. The level of construction and build-out is amazing. Where are all of the "trained" workers going to come from?
This is really a fantastic, in-depth article, and highlights a lot of pieces about Motorola's history of which I was totally unaware. The breadth of their innovations was far greater than I realized, and the early decision to set up a world class shop in China seems to be very visible today in that area of the world.
That the internal competitions eventually led to internal war between different "tribes" doesn't totally surprise me. It seems you always read about that eventually happening in the post-mortem of any company with that type of structure. I wonder if there's a good way to balance internal competition. I imagine you would have to keep close watch on the overall silo-ing of each department.
I'm from the Chicago area, and I remember driving by their campus many times over the years as a kid, only really having an idea that they were somehow involved in phones. I was in high school when the Razr came out, and based on how popular it was I thought Motorola was an absolutely world-dominating company, not a business on the rebound from extremely heady heights.
That the internal competitions eventually led to internal war between different "tribes" doesn't totally surprise me. It seems you always read about that eventually happening in the post-mortem of any company with that type of structure. I wonder if there's a good way to balance internal competition. I imagine you would have to keep close watch on the overall silo-ing of each department.
I'm from the Chicago area, and I remember driving by their campus many times over the years as a kid, only really having an idea that they were somehow involved in phones. I was in high school when the Razr came out, and based on how popular it was I thought Motorola was an absolutely world-dominating company, not a business on the rebound from extremely heady heights.
I used to work in their cell phone sector, then moved to corporate IT. The joke at the time was: A meeting was called between Chris Galvin (the CEO at the time), and the heads of the various departments, to show their new technologies. The cell phone guy says "We have a new cell phone, that you can also send and receive pages on it". The guy from the 2-way radio sector says "We have a new radio, you can use it to make cell phone calls on too. And we are working on adding paging capabilities to it". Then the guy from the pager sector plops his device on the table, and says "Our new pager is 2-way, and we've add the ability to make calls on it, with a earpiece attachment. And it has a built-in FM radio".
And all the devices took a different power adapter, and different battery.
And all the devices took a different power adapter, and different battery.
I was in Motorola labs until 2003, and the article is spot on.
I had heard crazy stories back then, for example how the handset division (PCS) had to reverse-engineer Motorola Semiconductor products after buying a phone on the street in Hong Kong because they could not get the specs internally.
The whole idea of Motorola competing with itself sounded as crazy to us then as it does now.
Motorola was way too silo'ed and metrics driven, with a ruthless focus on efficiency, that was often short sighted. I guess no one there read the Innovators Dilemma.
I had heard crazy stories back then, for example how the handset division (PCS) had to reverse-engineer Motorola Semiconductor products after buying a phone on the street in Hong Kong because they could not get the specs internally.
The whole idea of Motorola competing with itself sounded as crazy to us then as it does now.
Motorola was way too silo'ed and metrics driven, with a ruthless focus on efficiency, that was often short sighted. I guess no one there read the Innovators Dilemma.
I once had a coworker who used to work at Intel tell me that when a company or product has no competition, it's time to find somewhere else to work, because only bad things will happen to that company's culture.
I kinda suspect that companies in this position are damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they foster internal competition, then the place becomes overly political, nobody cooperates, it becomes miserable to work there, and all the good people leave. If they don't, then there's no sense of urgency, everybody goes off and does their own pet project, people waste time on silly stuff, folks who pay attention to external customer needs can't get the necessary internal buy-in, and all the good people leave.
Eventually competition springs up externally, but by then the organization may have ossified so much that it's incapable of responding to it.
I kinda suspect that companies in this position are damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they foster internal competition, then the place becomes overly political, nobody cooperates, it becomes miserable to work there, and all the good people leave. If they don't, then there's no sense of urgency, everybody goes off and does their own pet project, people waste time on silly stuff, folks who pay attention to external customer needs can't get the necessary internal buy-in, and all the good people leave.
Eventually competition springs up externally, but by then the organization may have ossified so much that it's incapable of responding to it.
It almost makes you think a good idea might be to fund high performing employees to form their own companies to compete with you. Basically incubate your own competitors, but hold a minority stake in their companies.
Where is Google in this context then? They are the 800 pounds gorilla, but a steady stream of innovations still seems to flow from them.
Google's innovations all come from entering new markets and competing with other businesses. GMail competed with HotMail and Yahoo!Mail, Maps competed against MapQuest, Chrome competed against Firefox and IE, Android competes against iOS. Offers competes against Groupon, Wallet competes against Paypal/Square/Stripe. Google products that have not had solid competition (Glass, Wave, Groups, Knol, GoogleBase) or that have competition but don't have the management buy-in and flexibility needed to win against that competition (Orkut, Video, Jaiku, Dodgeball, Buzz, Reader & Blogger in their later years) have not tended to do as well.
Google Search languished for many years (roughly 2004-2009) while Google invented all these other products. Then Bing launched in 2009, and there was a period of rapid innovation from 2009-2011 that gave us Search Options, one unified search across all corpora, 2 visual redesigns, realtime search, Instant, Authorship, Search Plus Your World, and Knowledge/Answer Cards. Then things slowed down again in 2012 when everyone realized Bing was a joke. I personally witnessed - to both my benefit and my detriment - both extremes I mentioned in my original post.
Google Search languished for many years (roughly 2004-2009) while Google invented all these other products. Then Bing launched in 2009, and there was a period of rapid innovation from 2009-2011 that gave us Search Options, one unified search across all corpora, 2 visual redesigns, realtime search, Instant, Authorship, Search Plus Your World, and Knowledge/Answer Cards. Then things slowed down again in 2012 when everyone realized Bing was a joke. I personally witnessed - to both my benefit and my detriment - both extremes I mentioned in my original post.
That's a good question.
My guess is that Google is still much too young a company to esperience any of the issues. Maybe once the founders are out for good, and we see more tradtional MBA-style leadership, the traditional illnesses will start emerging too.
Up to now Google has avoided the problem by consistently biting off more than it can chew, landing some borderline-success and improving on from there. This is what they did with search, advertising, book digitalization, online videos, etc. In short, there wasn't much need for internal competition, since they were actively looking for new challenges from the outside.
It's great that they're doing all of this, but I'm curious whether at some point (a few decades from now) they'll eventually decide that all the effort isn't really worth it and focus only on the high-margin stuff.
My guess is that Google is still much too young a company to esperience any of the issues. Maybe once the founders are out for good, and we see more tradtional MBA-style leadership, the traditional illnesses will start emerging too.
Up to now Google has avoided the problem by consistently biting off more than it can chew, landing some borderline-success and improving on from there. This is what they did with search, advertising, book digitalization, online videos, etc. In short, there wasn't much need for internal competition, since they were actively looking for new challenges from the outside.
It's great that they're doing all of this, but I'm curious whether at some point (a few decades from now) they'll eventually decide that all the effort isn't really worth it and focus only on the high-margin stuff.
Which innovations would that be?
Really? They seem to have slowed a lot in recent years, and a lot of their most innovative stuff is coming from acquisitions rather than internally. They had some good ideas that kept them better a bit longer (catering, 20% time - which I hear is now much less solid than it once was), but they now look rather like a bigger Cisco.
I'd expect the best people to leave soon or have left already (we already see a lot less enthusiasm about working there than there used to be), and Google to decline like any other big company.
I'd expect the best people to leave soon or have left already (we already see a lot less enthusiasm about working there than there used to be), and Google to decline like any other big company.
Maybe. But as far as I know, Chrome was a 20% project originally, not an acquisition. And then you have stuff like Spanner, which came out relatively recently, or Speedy. They still make new, interesting technologies, even if a lot of it is not on the radar of ordinary consumers.
Chrome had full time engineers fairly quickly. Externally I saw Google pull back resources that were working full time on Firefox and hired several engineers that were Mozilla experts Ben G., Doron, WTC.
No doubt, but there is nothing wrong with that picture. Why wouldn't you do that if an engineer came in with a prototype and a compelling reason why his/her pet project should be important to the company?
Plus let's not forget that Chrome for a long time used Webkit, meaning the browser core was there from the start already.
That's selling Google a bit cheap.
Google Fiber, the Internet on hot air balloons and driverless cars are all fairly innovative projects with no known competitors. There's also the secret project that Andy Rubin's team is working on and who knows what else we don't know about brewing at GoogleX.
Google Fiber, the Internet on hot air balloons and driverless cars are all fairly innovative projects with no known competitors. There's also the secret project that Andy Rubin's team is working on and who knows what else we don't know about brewing at GoogleX.
How on earth is Google Fiber an innovation? Please explain. Fibre Internet and Gigabit internet can be had for years across many cities of the world (Hong Kong, Singapore, Istanbul) and even in select cities in the US. What was the innovation done there?
The Hot Air Balloons are a bit of a gimmick, but definitely innovative and new as is the driverless car project which could have tremendous impact on transportation of the future.
The Hot Air Balloons are a bit of a gimmick, but definitely innovative and new as is the driverless car project which could have tremendous impact on transportation of the future.
Drawing lessons from The Innovator's Dilemma is harder than it seems.
In the early 2000s, Nokia's management team often referred to the book. CEO Jorma Ollila has said that he tried to build a corporation that would avoid the traps described in the book. Yet when we look back now, it seems obvious that Nokia was coasting on increasing profit margins and incremental innovation to drive its featurephone and Symbian smartphone lines.
How did that happen? My impression is that Nokia misjudged their market position. They saw themselves as the upstart innovator as compared to traditional PC vendors.
Just before the iPhone was unveiled, Nokia introduced the N95 smartphone with the tag line "This is what computers have become." In Nokia's eyes, their phones were going to disrupt computers in a few years. But they were beaten by Apple's better vision of what the disruptive mobile computer should look like, and they never recovered from that punch.
In the early 2000s, Nokia's management team often referred to the book. CEO Jorma Ollila has said that he tried to build a corporation that would avoid the traps described in the book. Yet when we look back now, it seems obvious that Nokia was coasting on increasing profit margins and incremental innovation to drive its featurephone and Symbian smartphone lines.
How did that happen? My impression is that Nokia misjudged their market position. They saw themselves as the upstart innovator as compared to traditional PC vendors.
Just before the iPhone was unveiled, Nokia introduced the N95 smartphone with the tag line "This is what computers have become." In Nokia's eyes, their phones were going to disrupt computers in a few years. But they were beaten by Apple's better vision of what the disruptive mobile computer should look like, and they never recovered from that punch.
It took about 3-4 iPhone generations before Apple finally caught up to the immense feature set of the N95 (which was released a year before iPhone 1). I remember I was live video streaming on N95 (Qik) before video recording was even possible on iPhone!
It was pretty obvious in 2003 that PCS was too focused on the US market, and ignoring "niche" GSM touch-screen smartphones at their peril.
In 2003 PCS China developed a Linux-powered touch-screen phone that ran Java (J2ME) apps, the A760. A clear predecessor to Android.
It never launched outside of Asia because it wasn't developed in the USA, and wasn't the razr.
In 2003 PCS China developed a Linux-powered touch-screen phone that ran Java (J2ME) apps, the A760. A clear predecessor to Android.
It never launched outside of Asia because it wasn't developed in the USA, and wasn't the razr.
They peaked with the N95, it was good for it's time (March 2007) especially since we didn't get the iPhone in the UK till November 2007. It was popular at the time in the UK with early adoptors.
However, the N96 (Feb 2008) was a poor product, hard to read email on, browse the web and tons of bugs in basic features, with basically no software updates in all the time it was out. All of this on a product cost much the same as the iPhone. I wrote about this a while back: https://rythie.com/blog/blog/2009/09/17/dont-buy-a-nokia-n96...
They didn't see (nor did many) that the highend/smartphone market, would basically be the entire market. They needed to double down on N95/N96 and highend phone quality, but they were all over the place trying to make 100s of different phones.
However, the N96 (Feb 2008) was a poor product, hard to read email on, browse the web and tons of bugs in basic features, with basically no software updates in all the time it was out. All of this on a product cost much the same as the iPhone. I wrote about this a while back: https://rythie.com/blog/blog/2009/09/17/dont-buy-a-nokia-n96...
They didn't see (nor did many) that the highend/smartphone market, would basically be the entire market. They needed to double down on N95/N96 and highend phone quality, but they were all over the place trying to make 100s of different phones.
I remember when the iPhone 1 was introduced there were comments here that it will inevitably kill Nokia. At the time I was wondering what those guys are smoking :)
If you combine 2007 and 2008, Nokia sold nearly 1,000,000,000 handsets in those two years. That's One Capital-B Billion.
Nobody thought an 800-lb gorilla like Nokia could ever be unseated. Looking back, it's still boggling that the collapse took a mere seven years.
Nobody thought an 800-lb gorilla like Nokia could ever be unseated. Looking back, it's still boggling that the collapse took a mere seven years.
True. It's still mind boggling when I think about that.
Me too, but I thought that because I assumed the ceo of Nokia would order his engineers to drop whatever the fuck they where doing this second, start a death march, and build him an iphone.
I think they already had one, in the N800 line that was to become Maemo/Meego/Tizen/Sailfish. They just didn't want to put all wood behind that arrow. I never understood why, exactly, and I still don't.
Because Nokia was selling billions of phones and most of them were not full-feature smartphones.
In Nokia's mindset, especially on a continent where people paid full price for phones and didn't get subsidies from the carriers like US users, web enabled smartphones were a high-end luxury or business item. The cash was still in the meaty part of the curve, selling candybars and semi-feature phones to economy users and the 2nd-3rd world.
Perhaps the iPhone wouldn't have been as big an initial smash if everyone had to pay $800-$1200 out of the gate.
In Nokia's mindset, especially on a continent where people paid full price for phones and didn't get subsidies from the carriers like US users, web enabled smartphones were a high-end luxury or business item. The cash was still in the meaty part of the curve, selling candybars and semi-feature phones to economy users and the 2nd-3rd world.
Perhaps the iPhone wouldn't have been as big an initial smash if everyone had to pay $800-$1200 out of the gate.
You could argue that the cash is still in the meaty part of the curve - much of Android's growth has come from smaller, lower-powered phones, and the biggest change in KitKat was reduced memory usage so that the latest Android features could fit on low-end phones that had previously been limited to Gingerbread.
I guess Nokia didn't figure on Google managing to fit an iPhone-like interface on commodity hardware.
I guess Nokia didn't figure on Google managing to fit an iPhone-like interface on commodity hardware.
Actually the 'continent' (I assume you mean Europe - if not, sorry then I am wrong) without subsidies where people pay full price for phones is a bit of an urban myth. At least for the time.
In fact in at least the larger countries (Germany, UK, France) people very much had to rely on anywhere between 12-24 months contracts to get subsidized phones. Remember, even (the higher end Nokia or Ericsson) feature phones cost several hundred dollars then.
I remember having paid 200 DM for my Ericsson T28 way back in the day which would have cost 3x as much if I didn't get it with a contract.
It's probably hard to make a leap of faith that will leave 95% of your engineers fumbling in the dark after being robbed of their Symbian/Windows environment, while that organisation is making record profits.
The iPhone 1 was just a glorified iPod without 3rd party apps, it excited mostly Mac users, not obviously something to "drop everything" over. Even now iPhone has less than 15% market share. Android was arguably a more obvious threat.
The iPhone 1 was just a glorified iPod without 3rd party apps, it excited mostly Mac users, not obviously something to "drop everything" over. Even now iPhone has less than 15% market share. Android was arguably a more obvious threat.
I have to disagree. I worked with someone who got an iphone the first week they where available; it probably involved standing in line for a day or something ridiculous. But while the videos that Jobs did where pretty amazing, when you held it in your hand and played with it, my thoughts where 1 - holy shit I need this, and 2 - using fb on this thing is going to be like crack. Maybe I was over optimistic, but I was pretty confident everyone with an ipod or a train/bus commute was going to have one pretty soon.
I still believe any ceo of a cell phone manufacturer who got one (and they all should have purchased an iphone on the first day) and didn't immediately see the future unfolding in front of them is incompetent.
I still believe any ceo of a cell phone manufacturer who got one (and they all should have purchased an iphone on the first day) and didn't immediately see the future unfolding in front of them is incompetent.
I'm not so surprised, because if you followed the market at that time closely, the iPhone was much less of an obvious innovation than it is in retrospect.
For starters, we'd had PDAs with touch screens for years, and they were hot in the business market for a while, but remained a niche product. Even when they got built in phones.
We'd had tablets since at least '99 (I worked on the software for one in '99 and we were certainly not first), and they'd remained a niche - either underpowered or overpriced (the latter typically being pretty much laptops with a swivel display).
When we tried to build interest from partners in our tablet in '99, it quickly became clear the market was not at all ready. People didn't understand why they'd need or want a product like that. Ericssons "Screen Phone" suffered the same fate, and quietly disappeared. (Though both the tablet I worked on, and the Ericsson Screen Phone were limited severely by being tied to ISDN base stations rather than truly mobile).
And it stayed like that for several years.
If you'd played with that stuff, the iPhone looked like an evolutionary step of a niche product.
If you were intimately involved with these markets at the time, it'd be easy to assume that the tepid response was still going to be the case when the iPhone arrived, and that at least you'd have plenty of time to see how the market was maturing before needing to respond. Let someone else make the expensive market lessons for you.
It's one of those cases where being too close to the technology was a disadvantage for many, because it meant not so easily seeing that this was the evolutionary step that finally would tip things over into creating excitement amongst regular people.
For starters, we'd had PDAs with touch screens for years, and they were hot in the business market for a while, but remained a niche product. Even when they got built in phones.
We'd had tablets since at least '99 (I worked on the software for one in '99 and we were certainly not first), and they'd remained a niche - either underpowered or overpriced (the latter typically being pretty much laptops with a swivel display).
When we tried to build interest from partners in our tablet in '99, it quickly became clear the market was not at all ready. People didn't understand why they'd need or want a product like that. Ericssons "Screen Phone" suffered the same fate, and quietly disappeared. (Though both the tablet I worked on, and the Ericsson Screen Phone were limited severely by being tied to ISDN base stations rather than truly mobile).
And it stayed like that for several years.
If you'd played with that stuff, the iPhone looked like an evolutionary step of a niche product.
If you were intimately involved with these markets at the time, it'd be easy to assume that the tepid response was still going to be the case when the iPhone arrived, and that at least you'd have plenty of time to see how the market was maturing before needing to respond. Let someone else make the expensive market lessons for you.
It's one of those cases where being too close to the technology was a disadvantage for many, because it meant not so easily seeing that this was the evolutionary step that finally would tip things over into creating excitement amongst regular people.
You had to learn how to print a new alphabet just so on a Palm Pilot. An iPhone gave you a virtual QWERTY keyboard. It was arguably slower to use for some people than the Palm shorthand, but any idiot could figure out how to use it. The rest is history.
Having an app store on the device probably helped as well, as you could easily add little features that mattered to you with much less hassle than a Palm Pilot.
I loved my Palm Pilots, but iOS (and Android) killed 'em dead.
Having an app store on the device probably helped as well, as you could easily add little features that mattered to you with much less hassle than a Palm Pilot.
I loved my Palm Pilots, but iOS (and Android) killed 'em dead.
Absolutely - all of the devices I mentioned had usability problems that are obvious in retrospect. But they were not so obvious for users steeped in this technology when looking at the first versions of the iPhone.
For my part, I was not at all interested in the iPhone: The keyboard was useless to me. I have big hands. The error rate I get with the iPhone keyboard made my (long discarded by then) Palm Pilot seem like the futuristic sci fi device. It wasn't until I tried one of the keyboard replacements for Android, on a bigger device, that I started preferring an on-screen keyboard.
Today I'm happily using SwiftKey on a 5.6" Android phone, so I'm back to swiping, though whole words rather than character by character, and I'd not rule out going to 6" next time. Going to an on screen keyboard felt like a massive step down after I'd tested friends iPhones. And a touch screen that didn't work with a stylus (without a massive tip) felt like a big step backwards.
The iPhone was obviously superior to dumb feature phones when it came. But lots of people in the industry had not had dumb feature phones for several years by then, and had learned to cope with (work around) or even like the things that the iPhone solved. That easily makes you blind for how other people will take to it.
For my part, I was not at all interested in the iPhone: The keyboard was useless to me. I have big hands. The error rate I get with the iPhone keyboard made my (long discarded by then) Palm Pilot seem like the futuristic sci fi device. It wasn't until I tried one of the keyboard replacements for Android, on a bigger device, that I started preferring an on-screen keyboard.
Today I'm happily using SwiftKey on a 5.6" Android phone, so I'm back to swiping, though whole words rather than character by character, and I'd not rule out going to 6" next time. Going to an on screen keyboard felt like a massive step down after I'd tested friends iPhones. And a touch screen that didn't work with a stylus (without a massive tip) felt like a big step backwards.
The iPhone was obviously superior to dumb feature phones when it came. But lots of people in the industry had not had dumb feature phones for several years by then, and had learned to cope with (work around) or even like the things that the iPhone solved. That easily makes you blind for how other people will take to it.
It sounds crazy (and is crazy), but that kind of corporate structure is surprisingly common. There's probably some executive training manual somewhere that advises this kind of nonsense. I think that manual is called "The Prince".
My first guess is that, in a perfect world, you would reduce the internal competition accordingly as the external competition grows.
When you are the only one making phones, internal struggle is good; when you are one of many, internal struggle makes you vulnerable.
When you are the only one making phones, internal struggle is good; when you are one of many, internal struggle makes you vulnerable.
Stupid "free market" ideologues. Edward Lampert is another one, doing the same thing and killing Sears.
Not so fast.
It seems clarity of focus and mission counts for a lot. When I look at a company like Sears, I don't get the sense of focus I get from a company like Apple.
It's surprising how little clarity the rank-and-file of many businesses have around what they're actually doing. In the case of Sears, are they trying to compete with Amazon? Or be a great local retailer? Or make great tools (Craftsman) and sell them directly and/or through channels?
Metrics are important but they aren't a substitute for vision and focus. When I see businesses driven from the very top levels of executive management strictly by metrics and numbers, I often wonder whether it's a symptom of a lack of focus and clarity from the folks at the top. Metrics are a great management tool, but they aren't good for setting direction, or leading.
It seems clarity of focus and mission counts for a lot. When I look at a company like Sears, I don't get the sense of focus I get from a company like Apple.
It's surprising how little clarity the rank-and-file of many businesses have around what they're actually doing. In the case of Sears, are they trying to compete with Amazon? Or be a great local retailer? Or make great tools (Craftsman) and sell them directly and/or through channels?
Metrics are important but they aren't a substitute for vision and focus. When I see businesses driven from the very top levels of executive management strictly by metrics and numbers, I often wonder whether it's a symptom of a lack of focus and clarity from the folks at the top. Metrics are a great management tool, but they aren't good for setting direction, or leading.
The rise and rapid fall of Iridium fascinates me. They poured so much money into something with so little chance to succeed. And yet, it survives to this day. Essentially, the original investors inadvertently gave the system as a gift to the world.
One story that has stuck with me goes that there was a presentation pitching the business case for Iridium. One part of the presentation goes, cell phone usage is projected to rise by X by the time Iridium becomes operational, leaving the market of Y - X for Iridium. Another part of the presentation goes, cell phone usage has consistently outstripped expectations by a factor of four, therefore our upside is even greater than we might expect. Apparently not realizing that the two claims contradicted each other, and that if cell phones really were growing so fast, it would mean little would be left for Iridium, which is of course what happened.
But I can't remember where I saw it, and I can't dig it up now. Anyone happen to know if I'm remembering anything remotely close to reality, and where I might find info on it?
One story that has stuck with me goes that there was a presentation pitching the business case for Iridium. One part of the presentation goes, cell phone usage is projected to rise by X by the time Iridium becomes operational, leaving the market of Y - X for Iridium. Another part of the presentation goes, cell phone usage has consistently outstripped expectations by a factor of four, therefore our upside is even greater than we might expect. Apparently not realizing that the two claims contradicted each other, and that if cell phones really were growing so fast, it would mean little would be left for Iridium, which is of course what happened.
But I can't remember where I saw it, and I can't dig it up now. Anyone happen to know if I'm remembering anything remotely close to reality, and where I might find info on it?
The funny thing is, they were right. Satellite phones are a big deal in places with limited/no infrastructre.
What they got wrong was the deployment details, too much weight was put on providing service to places where nobody actually is, like 75% of the Earth's surface that's ocean. So they ended up with 66 satellites in a polar orbit.
A better idea is like the Thuraya model, put a couple satellites up in geosynchronous orbit (so you maintain coverage) and get a huge coverage cone.
http://www.thuraya.com/network-coverage
Today, with two birds, Thuraya covers 161 countries, pretty much all of Europe, most of Africa, all of Australia, and most of Asia and almost all of the coastal areas you're likely to find significant ship traffic in.
Even better, the phones are basically GSM phones and use SIM cards (they even look more or less like a normal cell phone and I believe you can use them for terrestrial service if you're within distance of a normal cell tower), you can get data service at 60kbps. Not blazing, but if you're stuck out in the middle of the Gobi and have a full battery you can check email and tweet. There's even sleeves you can get for smartphones to turn them into sat phones and indoor repeaters so you can use the phones indoors.
Two more satellites and they could provide something like 90% global landmass coverage.
Really the only people Iridium could ever have sold to would be the Navy. Which is basically what happened.
(apparently a next generation is being planned for 2015-2017 Falcon 9 launch series)
What they got wrong was the deployment details, too much weight was put on providing service to places where nobody actually is, like 75% of the Earth's surface that's ocean. So they ended up with 66 satellites in a polar orbit.
A better idea is like the Thuraya model, put a couple satellites up in geosynchronous orbit (so you maintain coverage) and get a huge coverage cone.
http://www.thuraya.com/network-coverage
Today, with two birds, Thuraya covers 161 countries, pretty much all of Europe, most of Africa, all of Australia, and most of Asia and almost all of the coastal areas you're likely to find significant ship traffic in.
Even better, the phones are basically GSM phones and use SIM cards (they even look more or less like a normal cell phone and I believe you can use them for terrestrial service if you're within distance of a normal cell tower), you can get data service at 60kbps. Not blazing, but if you're stuck out in the middle of the Gobi and have a full battery you can check email and tweet. There's even sleeves you can get for smartphones to turn them into sat phones and indoor repeaters so you can use the phones indoors.
Two more satellites and they could provide something like 90% global landmass coverage.
Really the only people Iridium could ever have sold to would be the Navy. Which is basically what happened.
(apparently a next generation is being planned for 2015-2017 Falcon 9 launch series)
> Really the only people Iridium could ever have sold to would be the Navy. Which is basically what happened.
According to Wikipedia, as of 2012, service payments from governments accounted for only 23% of revenue.
According to Wikipedia, as of 2012, service payments from governments accounted for only 23% of revenue.
I thought there was greater latency between geo and ground and polar and ground? Does that factor in at all?
Seems that latency was a really big deal for them as well. With geosync you get a half-second delay or so, which is annoying to converse through.
But surely it's not $5 billion annoying!
But surely it's not $5 billion annoying!
The story I heard, and I don't care enough to even go looking for a link, was that some executive's wife couldn't make a phone call while on their yacht and thus the idea of Iridium was born.
Whether or not that is true (and I would guess it's either not, or heavily exaggerated), either your story or mine does seem to drive home the misplaced optimism of the Iridium investors.
Speaking for myself, when I'm touring the US on a motorcycle I can make do with some lack of cell coverage. If I really cared that much, and needed emergency communication, I'd bring a handheld amateur radio with which I can just about always hit a repeater when a cell phone has no signal. If I were to absolutely, positively have to have some means of emergency comms, I'd go buy a SPOT for a lot less than Iridium. And if Iridium ever had a chance to at least be viable, SPOT seems to have put a nail in that coffin.
So the market we're left with is folks that have a need to vocally chatter to someone else no matter the circumstances. There are only so many war zone reporters and mountain climbers to go around, though.
Whether or not that is true (and I would guess it's either not, or heavily exaggerated), either your story or mine does seem to drive home the misplaced optimism of the Iridium investors.
Speaking for myself, when I'm touring the US on a motorcycle I can make do with some lack of cell coverage. If I really cared that much, and needed emergency communication, I'd bring a handheld amateur radio with which I can just about always hit a repeater when a cell phone has no signal. If I were to absolutely, positively have to have some means of emergency comms, I'd go buy a SPOT for a lot less than Iridium. And if Iridium ever had a chance to at least be viable, SPOT seems to have put a nail in that coffin.
So the market we're left with is folks that have a need to vocally chatter to someone else no matter the circumstances. There are only so many war zone reporters and mountain climbers to go around, though.
> There are only so many war zone reporters and mountain climbers to go around, though.
The U.S. Department of Defense is Iridium's largest customer by far, and kept them alive with a large cash infusion at one point (if memory serves).
Also, fun fact: iridium modems provide the only continuous data link for the U.S. South Pole station. There are 12 modems ganged together, used for e-mail and weather info transfer. Bandwidth: 28.8kbps. (the station also has several high-bandwidth uplinks, but the coverage windows for those are limited, and they have to compete with NASA/ISS for bandwidth).
The U.S. Department of Defense is Iridium's largest customer by far, and kept them alive with a large cash infusion at one point (if memory serves).
Also, fun fact: iridium modems provide the only continuous data link for the U.S. South Pole station. There are 12 modems ganged together, used for e-mail and weather info transfer. Bandwidth: 28.8kbps. (the station also has several high-bandwidth uplinks, but the coverage windows for those are limited, and they have to compete with NASA/ISS for bandwidth).
When I was just about to get out of the military, I was offered a job as a radio technician at that station - 60k a year. I turned to my buddy (who had gotten the same offer) and said, "Who in their right mind would take 28 bucks an hour to work in Antarctica?"
That might be quite apealing to some. 60k isn't that little if most of life's necessities (housing, food, clothing, etc.) are provided to you for free.
Plus no relatives to ever deal with again, til you retire.
I would've probably taken the offer, but as it stands, I probably lack the qualifications required.
Plus no relatives to ever deal with again, til you retire.
I would've probably taken the offer, but as it stands, I probably lack the qualifications required.
Also, there is a Chrome plugin to do text messaging over Iridium.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/global-satellite-m...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/global-satellite-m...
It was actually a wife of an executive on a cruise, not a yacht. It looks like you can get cell connections on a cruise now, but I think it took quite a while. Remember, this "idea" was born around 1990.
If you haven't looked, it's actually quite reasonable now to rent an Iridium phone for a backcountry trip these days. If I was taking some boy scouts into the wild for long weekend, I'd definitely consider it in case of emergency.
The system was really a great piece of technology; MOT really let the engineers go at it. If it wasn't for the billing and provisioning, you could actually make an Iridium-to-Iridium call anywhere on the face of the earth in some sort of doomsday scenario, since all of the call routing goes between satellites—you don't need a ground station.
When I started at MOT, we were working on the broadband followup, Celestri, which turned into Teledesic. Same deal, anywhere on the globe, but around a 1-2Mbps connection, rather than Iridium's 0.002Mb data rate. It was a magnificent piece of engineering with hundreds of engineers working in a fancy new building with plans in place to double the building in a couple years as hundreds more engineers were coming on for the detailed design phases.
We were about 9 years from operation and had thousands of pages of architecture and design documents. I think the highest-level system design document was around 500 pages when it was shelved, but there were already some architecture documents running into the thousands of pages.
The projected launch costs alone were around $15B; that's not including actually building anything. It was the most expensive commercial project ever undertaken, though after Iridium's disappointing launch, even the most short-sighted executive could see that it was too big of a risk for any company to take.
Looking back, it was an amazing experience to be a part of a project that huge.
If you haven't looked, it's actually quite reasonable now to rent an Iridium phone for a backcountry trip these days. If I was taking some boy scouts into the wild for long weekend, I'd definitely consider it in case of emergency.
The system was really a great piece of technology; MOT really let the engineers go at it. If it wasn't for the billing and provisioning, you could actually make an Iridium-to-Iridium call anywhere on the face of the earth in some sort of doomsday scenario, since all of the call routing goes between satellites—you don't need a ground station.
When I started at MOT, we were working on the broadband followup, Celestri, which turned into Teledesic. Same deal, anywhere on the globe, but around a 1-2Mbps connection, rather than Iridium's 0.002Mb data rate. It was a magnificent piece of engineering with hundreds of engineers working in a fancy new building with plans in place to double the building in a couple years as hundreds more engineers were coming on for the detailed design phases.
We were about 9 years from operation and had thousands of pages of architecture and design documents. I think the highest-level system design document was around 500 pages when it was shelved, but there were already some architecture documents running into the thousands of pages.
The projected launch costs alone were around $15B; that's not including actually building anything. It was the most expensive commercial project ever undertaken, though after Iridium's disappointing launch, even the most short-sighted executive could see that it was too big of a risk for any company to take.
Looking back, it was an amazing experience to be a part of a project that huge.
Minus mention of the yacht, the Iridium website (http://www.iridium.it/it/news.htm) states that in 1985 Motorola executive Barry Bertiger's wife, Karen,was frustrated that she could not make a call with her cell phone from the Bahamas to one of her real estate clients back in the US.
For some reason, I thought Iridium was supposed to be marketed to "international business" crowd. Isn't that why they were charging $3k and expected people to call a hotline only to leave their contact information and have a follow-up phone call sometime during the next 7 business days? Or did Motorola believe that the market was moving from analog to satellite, as opposed to analog to digital?
For some reason, I thought Iridium was supposed to be marketed to "international business" crowd. Isn't that why they were charging $3k and expected people to call a hotline only to leave their contact information and have a follow-up phone call sometime during the next 7 business days? Or did Motorola believe that the market was moving from analog to satellite, as opposed to analog to digital?
There are no cell towers in the ocean. That's a lot where they get used.
Iridium was seen as the way to go based on the best predictions around. The investors thought it was a sure thing.
McKinsey made a prediction that there would be about 900K mobiles sold in the US in 2000. They were off by 10s of millions or thousands of percent...
This link says it was made in the early 1980s but the prediction was later than that. http://www.samizdata.net/2007/06/fun-with-statis/
It seems amazing now but it was based on the idea that mobile phones would not appear in anything like the numbers they have. The idea that in places like Africa where getting a phone took 10 years that they would have hundreds of millions of cell phones would have been seen as pretty crazy in 1989.
McKinsey made a prediction that there would be about 900K mobiles sold in the US in 2000. They were off by 10s of millions or thousands of percent...
This link says it was made in the early 1980s but the prediction was later than that. http://www.samizdata.net/2007/06/fun-with-statis/
It seems amazing now but it was based on the idea that mobile phones would not appear in anything like the numbers they have. The idea that in places like Africa where getting a phone took 10 years that they would have hundreds of millions of cell phones would have been seen as pretty crazy in 1989.
I'm sure he thought that Iridium usage would appeal to a fixed or proportional fraction of the cell market . Would it? I dunno. People still use Iridium where it's appropriate.
I got a slideshow of the Iridium deployment as part of a startup JV'd by Moto circa 1999. Iridium was one big ole project. Yep.
All this being said, Iridium lasted far longer than the startup.
I got a slideshow of the Iridium deployment as part of a startup JV'd by Moto circa 1999. Iridium was one big ole project. Yep.
All this being said, Iridium lasted far longer than the startup.
It really is shocking what a shadow of its former self Motorola has become. There was a time, not all that long ago that Motorola CPUs were a really valid alternative for a huge percentage of personal computers, that's really impressive.
Atari, Commodore, Sega, Apple, SNK, Sharp, Texas Instruments, Sun, and more all made significant systems with their chips.
Atari, Commodore, Sega, Apple, SNK, Sharp, Texas Instruments, Sun, and more all made significant systems with their chips.
Motorola Semiconductor was spun out to become Freescale. They're very much alive and kicking.
Their i.MX series of application processors are in a lot of devices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.MX
The old 6800/68000 cores live on in the S08/S09 and Coldfire lines.
Their i.MX series of application processors are in a lot of devices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.MX
The old 6800/68000 cores live on in the S08/S09 and Coldfire lines.
i.MX ships are ARM architecture no?
I just think it's a shame the 68k architecture didn't last at least into the Pentium age.
I just think it's a shame the 68k architecture didn't last at least into the Pentium age.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freescale_DragonBall
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freescale_ColdFire ;)
It has no memory protection though
It has no memory protection though
Holy moly. The ColdFire. You may have had one if you had an iRiver H320 or H340 MP3 player. The Rockbox [1] guys did some amazing things with that device (and that chip).
[1]: http://rockbox.org and http://download.rockbox.org/daily/manual/rockbox-iriverh300....
[1]: http://rockbox.org and http://download.rockbox.org/daily/manual/rockbox-iriverh300....
I still have some ColdFires in an embedded product of the company I work in. The biggest chips even have a full-blown MMU built in. Can be made to run Linux (2.6.x.) just fine, but the toolchains (e.g. gcc) seem to have somewhat bit-rottet, unfortunately.
What's the reason that newer tool chains and kernels don't work for you?
I was using (two years ago, the last time I played with them) a freescale provided 2.6 kernel that just hasn't been upgraded, and the old mentor-graphics/code-sourcery tool-chain. Together with busybox, I was able to get a basic serial console-based system with shell, all rather straightforward.
I didn't succeed getting a newer gcc+newlib compiled for m68k, though.
All in all, the whole ecosystem around m68k seemed to have rotted away, also m68k support was also taken out of u-boot at some point if I remember correctly.
While it certainly would be possible to fix all of this, it's just too much effort "just for fun" with no particular gain besides "because I can":
If you actually have the need for some embedded CPU, one is much better off using whatever ARM core the majority of tinkerers is currently using, that way you are less likely to experience this bitrot.
I didn't succeed getting a newer gcc+newlib compiled for m68k, though.
All in all, the whole ecosystem around m68k seemed to have rotted away, also m68k support was also taken out of u-boot at some point if I remember correctly.
While it certainly would be possible to fix all of this, it's just too much effort "just for fun" with no particular gain besides "because I can":
If you actually have the need for some embedded CPU, one is much better off using whatever ARM core the majority of tinkerers is currently using, that way you are less likely to experience this bitrot.
There's a lot of architectures that didn't make it. It didn't just happen to Motorola.
Really, it was just a problem of a maturing market. In the early days of any industry, many bespoke options can flourish. But as time passes and the market matures, power consolidates and there is no longer room for garage-companies.
Really, it was just a problem of a maturing market. In the early days of any industry, many bespoke options can flourish. But as time passes and the market matures, power consolidates and there is no longer room for garage-companies.
Yeah absolutely. But if you were in the early 90, the number of platforms using the 680x0 you'd think at least one of them would still be around with some very modern version of the architecture. Instead apple went PPC and the rest of the world went Intel (and finally apple too). In some ways that's what makes ARM so fun right now. Intel only is boring and everybody just send to arrive back at the PC on that architecture.
Reading the history, Motorola abandoned the 68k (Apple started switching to PPC that same year).
I don't know for sure why Moto dropped it, but lifting from Wikipedia:
While the Motorola 68040 offered the same features as the Intel 80486 and could on a clock-for-clock basis significantly outperform the Intel chip, the 486 had the ability to be clocked significantly faster without suffering from overheating problems, especially the clock-doubled i486DX2 which ran the CPU logic at twice the external bus speed, giving such equipped IBM compatible systems a significant performance lead over their Macintosh equivalents
I don't know for sure why Moto dropped it, but lifting from Wikipedia:
While the Motorola 68040 offered the same features as the Intel 80486 and could on a clock-for-clock basis significantly outperform the Intel chip, the 486 had the ability to be clocked significantly faster without suffering from overheating problems, especially the clock-doubled i486DX2 which ran the CPU logic at twice the external bus speed, giving such equipped IBM compatible systems a significant performance lead over their Macintosh equivalents
There was a 60860 around the Pentium era, but by the mid 90s everyone had RISC fever and Moto went on with the PowerPC family.
It wasn't just RISC fever. Motorola ran into substantial problems with getting the performance and cost to acceptable levels even for the 68060. I was an Amiga user at a time, and it was agonising for us to keep waiting for Motorola to close the performance gap that was opening to Intel CPU's. It became very clear that they were falling behind long before they announced there would not be another 680x0 CPU.
RISC Fever started in the '80s, and Motorola's 88000 was their initial entry into the race: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_88000
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I have Moto G, and Moto G 4G phones and they are very, very good. And they are selling well.
Second that. The Moto G 4G punches well above its weight and I couldn't be more happy with mine (speed, battery life, fit & finish - it's all excellent).
The only thing that isn't great is Lenovo buying Motorola. I have a feeling this will mean we wont get many android updates in the future :(
The only thing that isn't great is Lenovo buying Motorola. I have a feeling this will mean we wont get many android updates in the future :(
Ditto the Moto E, for a slightly different set of compromises.
As a Nokia employee, reading this article is like viewing my own corporate history through a funhouse mirror.
At least Motorola didn't make tyres, right?
Heh. A while back it looked like Nokia's market cap was on a trend to dip below that of Nokian Tyres, but it seems to have turned around now.
Also available for bicycles!
http://www.rei.com/product/792644/nokian-hakkapeliitta-w240-...
Great article and very interesting comments. One big takeaway for me is the fact that Google retained ownership of all patents after they sold the business to Lenovo. It'll be interesting to watch Google utilize those across their entire business, not just on the mobile side.
The patents were one of the main reasons the Motorola buy/sell was such a net win for Google (and that's without considering the benefit of strengthening the diversity of the Android ecosystem, tho we obviously don't yet know how successful that strategy was). When you factor in the value of the patents, the sale of Motorola Home, the tax benefits they got from Motorola's losses, and one last bullet point that I simply can't remember right now (ugh): what looked like a big loss for Google ended up making them something under a billion dollars (and again, this is before considering the value of the actual strategic intent of the deal).
That's strange, they made money on the deal, but got tax benefits from the losses?
I was at Motorola from 90-98. I recall that they were a bloated engineering bureaucracy that didn't understand software at all. The other thing is everyone knew Chris Galvin was going to run the company. Lots of executives left during that period. Finally, the iPhone killed everybody: Nokia, Ericsson, Blackberry. It was inevitable. When markets make big shifts, big companies can't adapt.
However the mid 2000s were the period of the highly successful Razr series which is still the #1 clamshell phone to date in terms of sales numbers. The very first Android phones weren't that bad either.
The RAZR succeeded on design, the software sure wasn't the key attraction of that device. Motorola's phone O/Ses (yes, plural) were all very underpowered.
Something the Chicago Magazine article doesn't really mention is the death of Geoffrey Frost in 2005. Frost spearheaded the RAZR's marketing and started to turn Moto's fortunes around in the early 2000s. After Frost passed, things went rudderless on the eve of the iPhone and Android.
http://archive.fortune.com/2006/05/31/magazines/fortune/razr...
"He also had spun an appealing narrative about how Motorola was cool again, and a myth about the slick downtown Chicago design studio where the phone had taken shape." (Which never existed)
Something the Chicago Magazine article doesn't really mention is the death of Geoffrey Frost in 2005. Frost spearheaded the RAZR's marketing and started to turn Moto's fortunes around in the early 2000s. After Frost passed, things went rudderless on the eve of the iPhone and Android.
http://archive.fortune.com/2006/05/31/magazines/fortune/razr...
"He also had spun an appealing narrative about how Motorola was cool again, and a myth about the slick downtown Chicago design studio where the phone had taken shape." (Which never existed)
> The RAZR succeeded on design, the software sure wasn't the key attraction of that device.
Yup. Synergy was probably fine for little B&W lcd screen devices, but they kept hacking onto it...
> Motorola's phone O/Ses (yes, plural) were all very underpowered.
More on this: "What killed Motorola? Not Google! It was Moto's dire software" http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/29/rockman_on_motorola/
> Motorola's phone O/Ses (yes, plural) were all very underpowered.
More on this: "What killed Motorola? Not Google! It was Moto's dire software" http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/29/rockman_on_motorola/
They also let the carriers customize the UI and control how subscribers could access advanced services and software (games). Remember BREW?
Supposedly the Razr could have had longer legs as well, if they had overhauled it more quickly, rather than tiny tweaks. Don't have the link about that one handy though.
I interned in PCS 2002-2004. Android wasn't out yet (but Danger Sidekick was) and Moto was already working on a Linux+Java OS. That project was the division's great hope, but missed deadlines on and on.
Cramming a Java OS onto 2004 mobile hardware, very risky choice of a savior.
Half the interns used Treo, Sidekick, LG. Half had a Razr.
Cramming a Java OS onto 2004 mobile hardware, very risky choice of a savior.
Half the interns used Treo, Sidekick, LG. Half had a Razr.
As a Chicagoan who worked in another closely related telecom company, the presence of Motorola was huge. Not so anymore, but its certainly a 'hallowed' name in the area. You definitely hear a lot of stories regarding the way bonuses used to work, and what it was like working for a company that was sort of "Google-ish" for its day. Its sad whats happened to Motorola, but that is the way the economy seems to work. Another great unmentioned Chicago Telecom name here is Bell Labs. Chicago Mag could certainly write an entire article about the storied rise and fall of that company too.
It just seems like all the Chicago technology greatness has melted outwards to the coasts. Silicon Valley and NYC (as well as foreign businesses) tend to dominate the areas that Motorola, Bell Labs, etc used to rule.
It just seems like all the Chicago technology greatness has melted outwards to the coasts. Silicon Valley and NYC (as well as foreign businesses) tend to dominate the areas that Motorola, Bell Labs, etc used to rule.
As someone who went to Purdue and would have liked to stay in the Midwest, it astounded me how few tech jobs were available in the Midwest (I graduated in '04).
I didn't get a single callback of any sort from a company in the Midwest until 18 months after my graduation and it was to interview for a 1 year contract position at less than half what I was making at the job I accepted in Southern California. Nearly all my friends had similar situations, ending up on one of the coasts, or Austin.
I didn't get a single callback of any sort from a company in the Midwest until 18 months after my graduation and it was to interview for a 1 year contract position at less than half what I was making at the job I accepted in Southern California. Nearly all my friends had similar situations, ending up on one of the coasts, or Austin.
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tl;dr: We gave away our competitive edge to the Chinese in return for goosing short term profits, and are now paying the price.
Thats pretty tl;dr. Just looking at the graph I'd say this part was more important:
"Motorola poured $2.6 billion and countless engineer hours into a $5 billion consortium to develop it. But once Iridium was finally operable in the late 1990s, its bulky $3,000 phones and $7-a-minute calls proved prohibitively expensive. Iridium declared bankruptcy in 1999 and sold off the bits for $25 million."
Because that was when the decline started.
"Motorola poured $2.6 billion and countless engineer hours into a $5 billion consortium to develop it. But once Iridium was finally operable in the late 1990s, its bulky $3,000 phones and $7-a-minute calls proved prohibitively expensive. Iridium declared bankruptcy in 1999 and sold off the bits for $25 million."
Because that was when the decline started.
I accidentally down voted you... But meant to up vote.
Anyway, that is exactly what happened. We've transferred so much technology so quickly to China and India. The only hope for g the USA now is that standards of living rise in those counties enough that the wage gap isn't so bad, and more high tech can stay here.
Anyway, that is exactly what happened. We've transferred so much technology so quickly to China and India. The only hope for g the USA now is that standards of living rise in those counties enough that the wage gap isn't so bad, and more high tech can stay here.
I worked in like '04-'08 building third party mobile software for a large variety of manufacturers and devices. Remember, this was pre-iphone, so there was a big business in building component X for device Y on platform Z.
In my experience of device manufacturers:
Nokia was insanely arrogant; the google of its day. Sony Ericsson were quite good, it showed that they wanted to build a quality experience.
The Japanese manufacturers were absolutely insane. They would routinely produce P1 bug reports in the style of "we opened the X application repetatively. On the 1154th time it crashed on start-up. Sometimes."
We had a few projects with Motorola together with US carriers. They were total nightmares - the Motorola engineers seemed like they had been picked up from the streets of Hyderabad the day before. (This is not a racial prejudice: most of the Indian engineers I've come across in the industry have actually been remarkably talented. This is not valid for the Motorola engineers though.) Most of these device projects were very high profile in the US, and presumably important for Motorola; yet they couldn't or wouldn't muster better staffing.