[6] Motorola designed and sold wireless network equipment such as cellular transmission base stations and signal amplifiers.

Paul Galvin wanted a brand name for Galvin Manufacturing Corporation's new car radio, and created the name "Motorola" by linking "motor" (from motor car) with "ola" (from Victrola), which was also a popular ending for many companies at the time, e.g. Moviola, Crayola.

[10] The company sold its first Motorola branded radio on June 23, 1930, to Herbert C. Wall of Fort Wayne, Indiana, for $30.

[4][3] Galvin Manufacturing Corporation began selling Motorola car-radio receivers to police departments and municipalities in November 1930.

Motorola ranked 94th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.

The last plant was listed in Quincy, Illinois at 1400 North 30th Street where 1,200 employees made radio assemblies for both homes and automobiles.

[17] In 1969, Neil Armstrong spoke the famous words "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" from the Moon on a Motorola transceiver.

That same year, Motorola sold its television business to the Japan-based Matsushita – the parent company of Panasonic.

In 1980, Motorola's next generation 32-bit microprocessor, the MC68000, led the wave of technologies that spurred the computing revolution in 1984, powering devices from companies such as Apple, Commodore, Atari, Sun, and Hewlett-Packard.

[21] In September 1983, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the DynaTAC 8000X telephone, the world's first commercial cellular device.

[26] On January 29, 1988, Motorola sold its Arcade, New York facility and automotive alternators, electromechanical speedometers and tachometers products to Prestolite Electric.

[30] In June 2000, Motorola and Cisco supplied the world's first commercial GPRS cellular network to BT Cellnet in the United Kingdom.

[35] In June 2006, Motorola acquired the software platform (AJAR) developed by the British company TTP Communications plc.

The technology came after a break in a partnership with Apple Computer (which in 2005 had produced an iTunes compatible cell phone ROKR E1, and most recently, mid-2007, its own iPhone).

Originally it was expected that this action would be approved by regulatory bodies and complete by mid-2009, but the split was delayed due to company restructuring problems and the 2008–2009 extreme economic downturn.

[48] It lost several key executives to rivals,[49] and the website TrustedReviews called the company's products repetitive and un-innovative.

[55] Also that month, analyst Mark McKechnie from American Technology Research said that Motorola "would be lucky to fetch $500 million" for selling its handset business.

[59] Motorola scored relatively well on the chemicals criteria and has a goal to eliminate PVC plastic and Brominated flame retardants (BFRs), though only in mobile devices and not in all its products introduced after 2010, despite the fact that Sony Ericsson and Nokia were already there.

For example, the housings for the MOTO W233 Renew and MOTOCUBO A45 Eco mobile phones contained plastic from post-consumer recycled water cooler bottles.