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In the early 2000s, Motorola—the company that two decades earlier had pioneered the mobile-phone industry—seemed to have lost its way. The communications industry titan still had a respectable share of the worldwide mobile-phone market, to be sure, but Finland-based Nokia held the lead, and emerging Korean competitors Samsung and LG had the lock on cool.
While most players focused on adding more and more features to their mobile phones to avoid the specter of commoditization, in 2004, Motorola bucked the industry trend by introducing the ultrathin Razr V3 cell phone. Just 3.35 ounces and a half-inch thick, the Razr was simpler, smaller, and sleeker than any existing phone.
The $450 phone has been a surprising breakout hit for the company, selling more than a million units in its first six months and leaving rivals scrambling to come up with something equally appealing and competitive. Just as significant, the Razr helped give Motorola a much-needed image boost, making the company appear more forward thinking and trendy than it had been perceived to be.
The Razr represents "a departure [for]…the stodgy, engineering-driven, Midwestern company that was Motorola," Yankee Group analyst John Jackson said in an Associated Press story.
To successfully introduce what it now refers to as an "iconic" product, Motorola maintained a single-minded focus on simplicity, avoiding the temptation to layer in additional features that would have made the phone bigger, heavier, and less distinctive. The company also had to dodge some of the classic traps—such as consensus-based decision-making processes that can result in compromised products—that make it so difficult for big businesses to follow new st ...