The fate of Ed Zander

Image: Ed Zander

At the end of 2005, Motorola introduced another iTunes-compatible phone called the SLVR L7, which was based on the rather attractive L6 model and featured Bluetooth, a camera, and again a limit of 100 songs. It was not received any more warmly than the ROKR. In January 2006, Motorola introduced the successor to the ROKR E2, equipped with competing RealPlayer technology and no limit on the number of files that could be played, but even this phone did not return the company to the ranks of major mobile phone manufacturers. Motorola withdrew from a number of markets, including Europe, and from 2008 its mobile division was in a state of clinical death until it was bought by Google for $12.5 billion at the end of 2011. The reason? It held patents that could help Google defend itself in patent wars. When Apple unveiled its iPhone in January 2007, Motorola CEO Ed Zander could do nothing better than arrive at the CES trade show stage on a yellow folding bike and present several color variants of the RAZR phone, a four-year-old platform that neither operators nor customers were interested in anymore. The former hailed savior of Motorola left the company on January 1, 2008.

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The fate of Ed Zander

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