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Moto X Designer Quits: End of Innovation for Motorola?

With the RAZR Motorola learned that engineering, design, and marketing were key component of making a brand truly successful amongst the masses much before the first iPhone was launched in 2007.

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Sidharth Shekhar
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If there was any company in the early 2000s which proved that a design could sell a cell phone it was Motorola. With the RAZR Motorola learned that engineering, design, and marketing were key component of making a brand truly successful amongst the masses much before the first iPhone was launched in 2007.

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The Motorola Razr lineup has reserved its place in the pantheon of great phones. Not many phones break through that 100 million sales barrier but Motorola achieved this feat by selling 130 million which was quite an achievement during that time.

Jim Wicks, the man behind the iconic products as the original Razr, Android-powered Droid lineup, 2013 Moto X and 2014 Moto 360 smartwatch is leaving Lenovo owned Motorola after 15 years. Wicks had joined Motorola in 2001 after design lead roles at Sony and Sapient. He was also part of the leadership team that stayed on after taken over by Google and sold on to Lenovo. Rick Osterloh, the previous chief of the company, has already departed to head up a new hardware unit at Google.

Wicks will be moving into academia, joining Northwestern University's Segal Design Institute as a full-time faculty member. Ruben Castano who has been with Motorola since 2005 has been named his successor.

Earlier this year, Motorola president Rick Osterloh left the company to become the head of Google's hardware projects and will now oversee Google's Nexus devices among other products like Chromecast, OnHub, and Google Glass, which is now Project Aura.

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