Word: motorolas
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Though he doesn't know it, shop manager Zhu Baohua is on the front lines of the battle to reform the global economy. Zhu's three-floor electronics store, crammed with Sony TVs, Motorola cell phones and HP PCs, is located in a nondescript neighborhood in the western Chinese city of Xi'an. Far from China's dynamic coastal manufacturing and financial centers, Xi'an for decades has been an economic backwater known mainly as the home of China's famed terra-cotta warriors, reminders of the city's glory days as a capital of ancient dynasties...
...Hermès'. But from 2004 to early 2008, the company opened 94 new stores and dozens of outlet shops. By the end of 2007, same-store sales were dipping for the first time in years. Says the author: "Convenience acts like antimatter to aura and identity." Likewise, Motorola took its sleek, fashionable $400 Razr cell phone and flooded the market with it at a lower price. "It destroyed the Razr brand," says the author. "Consumers who once considered the Razr the high-fidelity phone now saw it as the cheap phone you get when signing a wireless contract." One consequence...
...Like scores of other Taiwan companies, HTC and Asustek have been laboring in obscurity for years as contract manufacturers, building and in some cases designing PCs, music players, cell phones, LCDs and video games on behalf of well-known brands such as Hewlett-Packard, Motorola and Apple. Taiwan's heavy concentration of contract manufacturers makes the country a high-tech powerhouse - but the business model has its limits. Because they work for others, contract manufacturers have little pricing power and don't reap the higher profit margins commanded by companies like Sony and Samsung. "There are very slim margins...
...main European and Asian companies as open buyers in this trade: Thailand Smelting and Refining Corp. (owned by British Amalgamated Metal Corp.), British Afrimex, Belgian Trademet and Traxys. And it questions the role of others further down the manufacturing chain, including prominent electronics companies Hewlett-Packard, Nokia, Dell and Motorola. Even though the companies may be acting legally, Global Witness criticizes their lack of due diligence and transparency standards at every level of their supply chain...
Bulky design aside, the brick was a defining achievement for Mitchell, a rough-and-tumble manager whose interest in technology was kindled by the Erector set he had received as a child. The seminal phone wasn't a hit, but it placed Motorola at the forefront of the cell-phone revolution...