Lenovo wants to bring back the Motorola brand name, Chairman thinks it was foolish to stop using it

Motorola is a brand name that we’re all familiar with, but since the company’s acquisition by China-based Lenovo, the brand name was probably meant to be killed off. Lenovo rebranded all Motorola phones to ‘Moto by Lenovo’, after all.

Motorola has had a chequered history, but it’s an old brand and is the creator of the world’s first mobile phone. Google bought the company in 2011, or at least part of it, and then later sold it off to Lenovo, which then proceeded to rebrand it.

The good news, however, is that Motorola Chairman and President Aymar de Lencquesaing told Cnet in an interview that the brand was coming back. Lenovo had initially intended to maintain two brands, its native Zuk brand and Moto by Lenovo. New management, it appears, has decided that the venerable Motorola brand should make a comeback.

In the interview, de Lencquesaing explained that the brand would make a comeback, but slowly, in phases. Cnet cites the examples of Brazil and Russia, where Motorola is a major brand in the former and virtually unknown in the latter.

In the course of the interview, de Lencquesaing also mentioned that the Moto Z was doing surprisingly well. Describing a traditional smartphone launch cycle, he stated that sales of most phones would peak at launch, and then taper off over the next few months. With the Moto Z however, it appears that interest was sustained over time.

In other news, Motorola’s Chairman believes that the Moto Mods helped a lot with this. He claims that most Moto Z users have purchased at least one mod and are interested in the platform.

Ultimately, he would like the Motorola name to be the special, premium brand name that it always was.

“It was foolish to throw it overboard,” he said.