Chapter 60 Section 2 Golden Age
From the end of World War II to the early 1990s, it can be said that it was a booming era for Motorola.Motorola has technical advantages unmatched by any company in analog wireless communication, and has created many world firsts.The American communication industry has a general classification method for communication, which is divided into: wired one-way (such as closed-circuit television), wired two-way (such as telephone), wireless one-way (such as radio) and wireless two-way (such as mobile phones and WIFI) four kind.For a long time, until more than ten years ago, AT&T has been the king of wired communication, RCA is the leader of wireless one-way communication, and Motorola is the out-and-out leader of wireless two-way communication.We can see from the previous section that Motorola's core business is related to two-way wireless communication.
In 1946, Motorola invented the car phone.Readers who have seen Bogart and Hepburn's "Sabrina (Dragon and Phoenix Match)" may have an impression of this product. In the film, Linus, the chairman of a large company, sets off from his home in Long Island, New York. Company colleagues give instructions.It is a pity that the car phone has always been a luxury for the rich, and it was replaced by the mobile phone before it became popular.Twelve years later, Motorola invented the car-based walkie-talkie, which was widely used in the United States by the police, taxi companies, and various transportation companies until it was replaced by cell phones in the late nineties (except for the police).We often saw this product in the police and gangster films of various countries before 2000.
1963 was a memorable year for Motorola.This year, Motorola invented the world's first rectangular color TV picture tube, and it quickly became the industry standard. (Before that, the color TV screen produced by RCA was round. Please see this picture)
In 1967, Motorola produced America's first all-transistor color TV—previous color TVs had more or less tubes.This incident had a great impact on Motorola. Although Motorola was ahead of the world in technology, its products were not for civilian use except for the radio in the car.The invention of the color picture tube marked Motorola's ability to enter the civilian market and shift the focus of its business to civilian use.But unfortunately, Motorola's initial attempts in the home appliance market were not very successful. By 1974, it had to sell its color TV business to Japan's Panasonic Corporation.Today, few people know Motorola's contribution to the color TV industry.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Motorola could afford to fail in color TV because it had too many technologies ahead of the world.By the 1980s, Motorola entered a decade of vigorous development, and its business also expanded from wireless communications to semiconductor chips for computers. In 1979, Motorola successfully launched the 68000 general-purpose microprocessor, which was named after the design integration level of 68000 transistors (although the actual integration level was 70000).Its address bus (Address Bus) has a unique width of 24 bits and can manage 16MB of memory, so it has become the chip of choice for all minicomputers and workstations.In the same period, Intel's processor was actually half a generation behind it, and the latter's 16-bit address width could only manage 64K of memory.
In the 1980s, with the development of digital signal processing, there was a demand for a dedicated digital signal processing chip (DSP), and this product came into being.Texas Instruments (TI), AT&T and Motorola successively launched three series of products including TSM, DSP and M56K in the early 1980s. This market developed so fast that it brought a new gold mine to Motorola.Today, the mobile phone core chip with DSP as the core and peripheral communication is still the world's largest-selling and most profitable semiconductor chip (because every mobile phone must have such a chip).
Of course, Motorola's greatest contribution to the world is the civilian cellular mobile phone it invented in the early 1980s.Everyone recognizes that Motorola is the inventor of today's mobile phone communications. Although AT&T claims that its cordless phones are earlier than Motorola's mobile phones, everyone knows that cordless phones and mobile phones are two different things.Because AT&T is rooted in wired communication, it will automatically resist wireless communication.When mobile phones first started, AT&T estimated that there would be no more than one million users worldwide by 2000. This estimate was a hundred times smaller than the actual number in 2000.Therefore, AT&T will naturally not focus on mobile communications.On the contrary, Motorola could not do anything in wired communication, so it naturally bet on mobile communication, leading and promoting the trend of mobile communication.
By the early 1990s, Motorola was the world's most technologically advanced player in the three fields of mobile communications, digital signal processing, and computer processors.What's more commendable is that its product reputation is excellent.My first contact with Motorola products was in the late 1980s, when some customs friends introduced their Motorola walkie-talkies to me.Those walkie-talkies can talk to colleagues on shore in the cargo hold of a large freighter surrounded by steel, which is not possible with any other product of its kind. In 1990, Motorola's turnover exceeded US$10 billion, second only to IBM and AT&T among IT companies.If Motorola can take all three major markets, it will undoubtedly be the largest IT company in the world today.Even if it can monopolize one of them, it is still a giant company.Unfortunately, it didn't do a single job well, and the leader of the communication revolution was eliminated by the technological wave it set off.What is the reason?
In 1967, Motorola produced America's first all-transistor color TV—previous color TVs had more or less tubes.This incident had a great impact on Motorola. Although Motorola was ahead of the world in technology, its products were not for civilian use except for the radio in the car.The invention of the color picture tube marked Motorola's ability to enter the civilian market and shift the focus of its business to civilian use.But unfortunately, Motorola's initial attempts in the home appliance market were not very successful. By 1974, it had to sell its color TV business to Japan's Panasonic Corporation.Today, few people know Motorola's contribution to the color TV industry.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Motorola could afford to fail in color TV because it had too many technologies ahead of the world.By the 1980s, Motorola entered a decade of vigorous development, and its business also expanded from wireless communications to semiconductor chips for computers. In 1979, Motorola successfully launched the 68000 general-purpose microprocessor, which was named after the design integration level of 68000 transistors (although the actual integration level was 70000).Its address bus (Address Bus) has a unique width of 24 bits and can manage 16MB of memory, so it has become the chip of choice for all minicomputers and workstations.In the same period, Intel's processor was actually half a generation behind it, and the latter's 16-bit address width could only manage 64K of memory.
In the 1980s, with the development of digital signal processing, there was a demand for a dedicated digital signal processing chip (DSP), and this product came into being.Texas Instruments (TI), AT&T and Motorola successively launched three series of products including TSM, DSP and M56K in the early 1980s. This market developed so fast that it brought a new gold mine to Motorola.Today, the mobile phone core chip with DSP as the core and peripheral communication is still the world's largest-selling and most profitable semiconductor chip (because every mobile phone must have such a chip).
Of course, Motorola's greatest contribution to the world is the civilian cellular mobile phone it invented in the early 1980s.Everyone recognizes that Motorola is the inventor of today's mobile phone communications. Although AT&T claims that its cordless phones are earlier than Motorola's mobile phones, everyone knows that cordless phones and mobile phones are two different things.Because AT&T is rooted in wired communication, it will automatically resist wireless communication.When mobile phones first started, AT&T estimated that there would be no more than one million users worldwide by 2000. This estimate was a hundred times smaller than the actual number in 2000.Therefore, AT&T will naturally not focus on mobile communications.On the contrary, Motorola could not do anything in wired communication, so it naturally bet on mobile communication, leading and promoting the trend of mobile communication.
By the early 1990s, Motorola was the world's most technologically advanced player in the three fields of mobile communications, digital signal processing, and computer processors.What's more commendable is that its product reputation is excellent.My first contact with Motorola products was in the late 1980s, when some customs friends introduced their Motorola walkie-talkies to me.Those walkie-talkies can talk to colleagues on shore in the cargo hold of a large freighter surrounded by steel, which is not possible with any other product of its kind. In 1990, Motorola's turnover exceeded US$10 billion, second only to IBM and AT&T among IT companies.If Motorola can take all three major markets, it will undoubtedly be the largest IT company in the world today.Even if it can monopolize one of them, it is still a giant company.Unfortunately, it didn't do a single job well, and the leader of the communication revolution was eliminated by the technological wave it set off.What is the reason?