2. Motorola

2. Motorola

It was year early year 1999, Motorola HQ started to evaluate all of cellular manufacturers in Japan to find out any possible arrangement between a Japanese company and Motorola cellular business (PCS, Personal Communications Sector).

We had senior executives from USA and Motorola Japan President, his staff and me are discussing strategy and to set up a hearing meetings with all of cellular telephone manufacturers in Japan.

This was because Motorola top management has recognized that a consolidation should be required in a cellular handset business.

After having discussions with many Japanese manufacturers, Motorola Japan recommended HQ that the possible candidates are Sony and Panasonic.

However, Panasonic had indicated that they are not interested in partnering with Motorola.

This recommendation brought up to Mr. Chris Galvin and his comment was that he does not like to deal with the President of Sony Corp. So the Sony partnership was rejected. After this, Motorola has been carrying out its cellular business under PCS (Personal Communication Sector) for a while and tried very hard to reenter Japanese market.

In the mean time, Sony has made a joint company with Ericsson at a year later.

Motorola had a trouble in PCS business since the market requirement has been changed to a smart phone type and the software portion of the unit became quite large so they could not follow these market changes and they finally decided to close Japan product development team. More recently, Motorola Mobility has been acquired by Google as we all know in year 2012.