Lenovo Retires Motorola Brand From Smartphones

One of the most famous brand names in mobile is to disappear in 2016 as Motorola finally bids farewell to an industry it helped build.

The Motorola name, which has adorned the iconic Razr flip-phone and spawned the famous ‘Hello Moto’ tagline, will no longer be used for smartphones or other devices as its parent company Lenovo looks like unite its mobile division under a single banner.

Both brands have co-existed since Lenovo bought Motorola from Google back in January 2014.

“We’ll slowly phase out Motorola and focus on Moto,” Motorola chief operating officer Rick Osterloh said in an exclusive interview Thursday at the CES conference in Las Vegas, CNET reported.

However the Motorola name will live on within Lenovo, becoming the corporate name for the division for new devices.

Goodbye, Moto

This means that the ‘Moto’ brand, most recently seen in the warmly-received Moto G and Moto X line of smartphones and Moto 360 smartwatch, will continue for the time being, as Lenovo looks to attract customers keen on that brand.

The current M logo used on these devices will continue to appear on future releases, but the name behind the products will change to “Moto by Lenovo”

Lenovo is the world’s largest PC maker, but has struggled to gain much traction in the mobile market outside China. Last August, the company announced that it would merge its existing Lenovo Mobile operations into Motorola Mobility, more than 18 months after it bought the company – minus patents and Project Ara – for £1.76 billion back in January 2014.

Under the restructuring, all Lenovo Mobile employees joined Motorola, with the latter taking over all future design responsibilities – which presumably will be rolled again into the new operation. Google had only bought Motorola Mobility two years earlier, with the Motorola name being removed from devices in this generation back in 2013.

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