Motorola, Inc.

U.S. manufacturer of wireless communications and electronic systems. The company was founded in 1928 in Chicago by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin as the Galvin Manufacturing Corp. In 1930 Galvin introduced a low-cost automobile radio under the brand name Motorola, later adding Motorola police radios, home radios, phonographs, two-way radios, and television sets. The company changed its name to Motorola in 1947. Foreseeing a future demand for transistors, Motorola became a leading manufacturer of them in 1958, after licensing a transistor design from Bell Laboratories. Transistor technology led to the development of microprocessors, which Motorola marketed to computer makers in 1974. Although the company worked with IBM Corp. and Apple Computer, Inc. (now Apple Inc.), in 1993 to develop the first consumer RISC (reduced-instruction-set computing) chip, Motorola realized greater success as a producer of embedded microprocessors—ubiquitous in kitchen appliances, pagers, video games, and handheld personal computers. Motorola was also a leader in the development of cellular telephone systems. Following financial losses at the end of the 1990s and in the early 2000s, the company divested itself of its semiconductor business to concentrate on cellular telephones and networking equipment.

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