Word: motorola
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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That led Potter to approach Nokia, Ericsson and later Motorola--which has agreed in principle to join Symbian--with an offer to use Psion's operating system EPOC as the basis for smart phones. He offered a remarkable deal, taking only 31% of Symbian and selling the remainder to the three phone giants for $50 million. "Companies like Nokia and Ericsson are concerned about ending up like the manufacturers of personal computers, becoming box shifters for Microsoft," says Martin Butler, a British computer consultant. "Potter could become the Bill Gates of the portable-device marketplace. It's there waiting...
...began in 1985 while Barry Bertiger, an engineer at Motorola, was vacationing in the Bahamas with his wife Karen. She wondered aloud why she couldn't call home from their secluded getaway on Green Turtle Cay. Good question, thought her spouse. By 1988, Bertiger and two colleagues had drafted blueprints for a revolutionary new system that would blanket the heavens with communications satellites--77 in all--bounce a cellular call from one to another, then beam the data stream downward 420 miles to one of 12 earth stations where the call would enter the terrestrial telephone network. Motorola dubbed...
Iridium is now a consortium whose major shareholders include Motorola (which kept a 20% stake), Lockheed Martin and Sprint, plus Germany's Veba AG and Russia's Krunichev State Research Production Space Center. The joint venture was supposed to go live on Sept. 23, but then software glitches led officials to disclose that they will delay until Nov. 1 what amounts to the final roll of the dice in its $5 billion gamble to revolutionize telecommunications--or become the best-publicized flop in history. The announcement nudged its stock price on the NASDAQ exchange down...
...dogs in the satellite-Internet communications business. The most ambitious venture is Teledesic, founded in 1990 by deep-pocket investors including Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal (with a 13.7% stake), and cellular pioneer Craig McCaw, who is the chairman and co-chief executive. Motorola, after a frosty initial reaction to the project, dropped its own system, Celestri, and joined in with $750 million for a 26% stake. Once jeered as the most starry-eyed start-up ever, the $9 billion Teledesic project has lately won some respect. Early this year the venture launched a test satellite...
Will sat phones follow suit? Well, here's one clue: in 1979, Neiman Marcus featured a $36,500 home-satellite TV system in its Christmas catalog. This year, its stores are selling Motorola's Iridium handset. Those who buy it will not only be able to call home and wish folks Happy Holidays from their Caribbean vacation this December; they'll also be able to look up and watch the three large-array antennas on an Iridium satellite line up with the sun, triggering a flash of light for careful observers back down on Earth...