Chapter 11 - Developing and Managing Products

Revisions of Products

   New products are essential to keep up with the market, and to maximize profits as a company in this fast paced digital era. As many other tech companies, Motorola follows the strategy of introducing flagship mobile devices every year. This trend was started back in 1996, they released the breakthrough mobile phone "StarTAC". They had a good few years after the release of the phone, but the competition was able to come up with more value added features which poised them to replace their flagship device  after 4 year to keep up with the competition. Today's mobile phone market is fiercely competitive. It is simply not adequate for a mobile phone company to replace their previous product every 4 years since the technology is evolving at a fast pace. Therefore, it has become a necessity for smartphone manufacturers to come up with a successor every year for their last year's smartphone, and Motorola has already confirmed their plans on refreshing their mobile line up this year. These new products that serves to replace the previous product are called revisions of the existing product. 

New Product Lines & Research and Development

   Fittingly to this discussion, they are about to enter a whole new product line this year with the announcement of Moto 360. It has already created a buzz in the tech community, but Motorola aims to reach the regular consumer with an ergonomic design that mimics the traditional timepiece. It's design departures from the geeky square design which is followed by other smatwatch manufacturers. These design changes were made by Motorola's research & development team that has conducted thorough research, and brainstorming to make significant changes for its new products in order to make it unique in the market.

Moto 360

Samsung Smarwatches

A different design approach to smartwatch

Four Stages of Product Life Cycle.

Motorola's breakthrough product, StarTAC is a product that went through the four stages of product life cycle. It was introduced in 1996, it was in the center attention. It caught the eye of many businessmen, since it was portable & well designed compared to its previous edition, MicroTAC. This stage was the introductory stage of the StarTAC. Sales were growing steadily with the hype of the new mobile phone as it entered in to the growth stage. Motorola reported that it sold more than 40 million units in 1999, and the European phone manufacturers, such as Nokia, Ericsson started to introduce their products to the market to compete with Motorola. By the end of year 200 sales reached 60 million units, but the rate of sales were decreasing compared to what it was two year ago. Therefore, it was the reaching the climax of its maturity stage. Predictability, the steady ship was startled by the European tech giants inventions. Moreover, several technical issues with the device drove away the new customers. By the end of 2000 it was struggling in the market, and the sales were decreasing rapidly which means it entered in to the decline stage of the life cycle. In  2001, Motorola discontinued the product as they came up with a new iterations of the StarTAC.


   Currently, the Moto X is reaching its decline stage, while the inexpensive model Moto G is in the growth stage after 6 months of its launch. Moto X has been struggling to compete with the big guns since launch, and the sales figures were continuously dropping to this day according to Wall Street Journal. On the other hand, reception for Moto G has been overwhelming, and because of this demand, it also went out of stock in countries like India, Brazil & United Kingdom. Therefore, Moto G clearly belongs to the growth stage while the troubled Moto X is in the decline stage.