Hello Moto: Parent company Lenovo to rebrand Motorola
The new name may not roll off the tongue given the corporate qualifier, but that’s what we’re stuck with now.
Motorola Chief Operating Officer Rick Osterloh told Cnet the company is phasing out the Motorola name and will instead change its branding to "Moto by Lenovo." He called Moto “our treasure” and said the company will make it stronger with a future lineup of phones.
The iconic logo will stay as an ode Motorola’s long association with mobile technology. It goes all the way back to the DynaTAC 8000x, the first consumer cellphone.
The story behind the story: It’s been a pretty interesting ride for Motorola over the past few years. Motorola split into two companies in 2011: Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobility. The latter was bought by Google for $12.5 billion in 2011, in part to shore up Android’s patent portfolio against a rush of lawsuits. Google then sold the company to Lenovo in 2014 for just under $3 billion, though the search giant retained much of the intellectual property.