In The Mid-Range Motorola Must Pull Marketable Products From Its Pipeline
Motorola’s mid-range goal should be to revive their brand relevance by developing and pulling new products out of the pipeline. Management should use the “utility-usage” technique which was outlined in the last article to translate utility directly into product features. Simply stated, use usage type and occasion to drive new features for new designs. Use these new models to position Motorola within specific marketspaces based on a combination of demographical, geographical, and lifestyle characteristics. At the beginning of this timeframe, Motorola should be well underway in dimensionizing the utility of key buyer groups; consider and/or use the key utility factors of Nokia cell phone buyers (Nokia is the world leader in terms of market share for cell phones) for features of new Motorola models. An extremely effective approach is to juxtapose features of new Motorola models with “missing” Nokia features – in other words, features that Nokia buyers want for their Nokia cell phones but don’t have. This is a “killer” strategy which would likely develop dominance for given buyer groups – the “trick” is to make it applicable to a widely reaching buyer group.

Recapture Share and Own Key Marketspaces For the Long Term
Motorola seems to be lacking a long-term vision for its cell phone business – which in a way is understandable given its current dire straights. But after they develop solid short-term measures to keep their cell phone business from crashing, they need to create an effective long-term strategy. This strategy should be simply this: recapture share and own key marketspaces. For a mid-range strategy, we talked about translating usage types and occasions into features to develop new designs. For Motorola’s long-term visioning, they should take it a step further and look to new benefits which fill desires and latent utility of key substantial buyer groups.

Tap Into Latent Demand
The long-term strategy for Motorola to exploit new benefits and tap into latent demand can be effective when executed by using orthogonal innovation of looking across other industries. In other words, what are the benefits accrued to customers or buyer groups in other industries which can be translated into features for Motorola cell phones? This is another point where breakthrough innovation can occur on a long-term and habitual basis. The essence of this strategy is to continually tap into latent demand for key customer groups – giving them benefits that they didn’t think about and want until they got them. This is how Motorola can own and dominate whole areas of a market space. The invention of the cell phone, iPod, and VCR are all examples of products which tapped into latent demand.

Motorola’s “Magic Show”
Motorola is in bad shape now, but given the right combination for the three-prong lock — short-term, mid-range, and long-term strategy – they can reclaim their market share, profitability, and strong brand equity. They need to minimize the bleeding in the short term by harvesting and milking revenue from their most popular current products – but without reinvesting in them. In the mid-range of two to four years, they need to “pull rabbits out the hat,” and introduce products which have features directly translated from the utility for key customer groups. Long-term, they need a “whole magic show,” impressing customers with “new tricks” that they didn’t even imagine before – features which tap into latent demand benefits. With this blueprint for success, the “motor” will rev back to life in Motorola.