Since it first entered the competitive electronic firm market, Motorola has
continued to remain successfully as a world leader in mobile communication
technology, ranking as the leading maker of cellular telephones, paging devices,
automotive semi-conductors, and microchips that are used to operate devices
other than computers. Although it has lost a few battles, Motorola has taken on
the Japanese head to head, through these times of Japanese competition. In the
1980’s Motorola controlled the emerging U.S, Market for cellular phones and
pagers but they weren’t aggressively focused on competing with the Japanese,
even though Japanese firms began to flood the U.S. market with low-priced,
high-quality telephones and pagers, leaving Motorola pushed into the background.
This is when Motorola “heard the call to battle.” Managers at first were not
sure how they should respond, so they originally decided to abandon some
business areas and even considered merging their own semiconductor operations
with those of Toshiba. After a lot of searching they decided to fight back and
regain the firm’s lost market position. This fight involved two main strategies:
First learn from the Japanese, and then compete with them. To carry out these
strategies, Motorola executives decided to to set a number of broad based goals
that essentially committed the firm to lowering costs, improving quality, and
regaining lost market share. Managers were then sent out on missions, mainly
focused on Japan, to learn how to compete better. Some manager even observed
Motorola’s own Japanese operations to learn and understand how it fully
functioned; while others focused more on how other successful Japanese firms
operated. At the same time, the firm also drastically boosted its budget, R&D,
and employee training worldwide.
One important thing that executives learned from their trip to Japan after
viewing a flag flying outside one of its plants was that they had altogether
forgotten their old ways of doing business and this is the exact point where
they decided to reinvent their firm from top to bottom. Old plants were closed
as new ones were built. Workers received new training with a wide range of
quality-enhancement techniques. They decided to place their new commitment to
quality at the forefront of everything it did. They even decided to announced
their goal of achieving a perfection rate of 99.9997% (Six Sigma), and when they
actually achieved this level of quality they received the Malcolm Baldrige
National Quality Award. Motorola has been continuously successful especially
abroad in Japan.
The firm has 20 offices and has more than 3,000 employees
there. It is currently number three in market share there both in pagers and
cellular telephones but is steadily approaching number two. Worldwide, Motorola
controls 45% of the total market for these products, have regained its number
two position in semiconductor sales, and is furiously launching as many new
productions that seem to baffle its competitors. Today Motorola generates more
than 56% of its revenues abroad. Major new initiatives are underway in Asia,
Latin America, and Eastern Europe and the firm has currently made headway in
Western Europe against rivals Philips and Thomsom. Motorola has set new and
staggering goals for itself. It wishes to take quality to the point where
defects will be measured related to billions rather millions. It wants to cut
its cycle time tenfold every ten years. And by this year, Motorola wanted over
75% of its revenues to come from foreign markets. Even though Motorola has
established and proven itself as a successful company, they have their strengths
and weaknesses like every other company. Motorola’s strengths are its net sales,
its innovation, and marketing and software development. Their passion, openness
of executives, Acquisitions, mergers, and business alliances are also part of
Motorola’s Strengths. Weaknesses of Motorola are the overall quality of its
operations, products, and business practices. They seem to generate unhappy
consumers and have poor consumer relations. Their products seem to have high
numbers of defects while Motorola itself is viewed as being inefficient and has
a reputation of lacking a strategy.
