Motorola Celebrates 20-Year Anniversary of the World’s First Commercial Portable Cellular Phone

MOBILE – An Exhibition Showcasing The History Of The Mobile Phone To Open In New York This Week

NEW YORK -- March 6, 2003 -- Motorola (NYSE: MOT) will commemorate the 20-year anniversary of the world’s first commercial portable cellular phone, unveiled by the company in 1983, with the MOBILE Exhibition -- a visual history of the mobile phone, a technological marvel that has transformed our world. In 1983, the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X phone was the first portable cellular phone to receive FCC type acceptance and become available for consumer purchase just a few months later -- igniting a frenzy of growth and consumer demand for personal wireless communication. The revolutionary DynaTAC 8000X phone will be on display at the MOBILE Exhibition in New York for the next two weeks, along with early prototypes, various mobile handsets, marketing pieces and narratives on mobile phone culture from the last twenty years which showcase the evolution of the industry.

Motorola’s rich wireless heritage grew from the company’s creation of the world’s first practical, affordable and commercially successful car radio in 1930 and later that decade, the company’s first commercial two-way radio systems. In the 1940s and 50s, Motorola applied advances in radio technology to introduce its first pager, its first car radiotelephone and radio transponders, including the radio transponder used by Astronaut Neil Armstrong to speak his famous first words from the moon in 1969. In the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, Motorola developed a handheld communication device intended for mass consumer use – the cellular phone. By the time the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X phone became the first FCC-approved portable cellular telephone in 1983, the company had invested fifteen years of research and $100 million in the advancement of cellular technology. The DynaTAC 8000X phone weighed 28 ounces, was 13 x 1.75 x 3.5 inches in dimension, boasted one hour of talk time and eight hours of standby time and featured a LED display.

“Consumers were so impressed by the concept of being always accessible with a portable phone that waiting lists for the DynaTAC 8000X were in the thousands, despite the initial $3,995 retail price,” recalled Rudy Krolopp, one of the original Motorola design team members responsible for creating the DynaTAC 8000X phone. “In 1983, the notion of simply making wireless phone calls was revolutionary and it was an exciting time to be pioneering the technology at Motorola.”

20 Years of Design
Motorola has continued its legacy of innovation by introducing new mobile design standards. In 1989, Motorola launched the MicroTAC cellular phone that featured a flip-lid mouthpiece and was the smallest and lightest phone on the market. Later designs included the Motorola StarTAC (1996) wearable phone, the model V60 (2001) flip-phone, the revolutionary model V70 (2002) with a rotating cover, funky display and blue backlighting and the Motorola A830 (2002) the world’s first dual-mode, tri-band, UMTS/WCDMA mobile phone with an integrated video camera, an embedded MP3 player and the ability to access voice and data services simultaneously.

"When Motorola designed the world's first mobile phone, the 'dream' of staying connected with family and friends away from the home land-line was the primary influence. Fast forward twenty years and we look at the concept of mobile phones in a whole new light because we are designing with a new consumer 'dream' in mind,” explained Tim Parsey, Corporate Vice President, Consumer Experience Design, Motorola PCS. “Today consumers seek ways to extend the way they choose to live. The mobile communication device is now an essential tool to enrich relationships, entertain, provide seamless productivity and become a focal point to express individuality. It is a world of communicating, sharing, creating and entertaining with voice, text, images, music and videos. The journey reflects passage through an inflection point in our industry from a pure technology focus, getting a unique technology to work well, to a technology enabled consumer focus where success is defined by the relevance of rich personalized experiences.“

20 Years of Firsts
In the 20 years since Motorola launched the DynaTAC 8000X phone or “brick phone,” the number of global wireless subscribers has grown from approximately 300,000 in 1984 to more than 1.2 billion today. As the industry has grown, Motorola has anticipated demand for emerging technologies ranging from wireless Internet access and gaming to text messaging and digital imaging. Motorola’s pedigree for achieving industry “firsts” remains constant and includes one of the world’s first commercial CDMA cellular networks (1995), the first tri-band GSM world phone, the L7089 (1999), the first GPRS phone in North America, the Timeport T7382i (2001) and one of the first mobile handset to operate on UMTS/WCDMA networks, the model A830 (2002).

MOBILE Exhibition
Motorola’s MOBILE exhibit, opening in New York on March 7, will display a selection of more than 100 rare and obscure historical exhibits from the unique collection in Motorola’s archives – from the first handheld two-way radios developed by Motorola for the U.S. armed forces during World War II, to the radio communication tools that allowed Neil Armstrong to communicate his famous words as he stepped onto the moon, to the earliest consumer “brick” phones that epitomized the image of the 80s yuppie. An extensive line-up of period marketing materials, advertisements and publications will illustrate how an industrial communication tool became a ubiquitous personal device that has revolutionized human behavior all over the world.

The MOBILE exhibit celebrates Motorola’s part in the evolution of portable, personal communication – from the clunky two-way radio to a discreet, universal object of desire. The exhibition tell stories from around the world of how the mobile has changed the way we talk, write and think; the way we organize our lives, relate to others and enhance our safety.

MOBILE is open from March 7 to March16, 2003, between 11:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. and located at 13-17 Crosby St. in New York, NY. Images and additional information on the MOBILE Exhibit can be found at www.motorola.com/MotoInfo.

About Motorola
Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) is an international leader in providing integrated communications and embedded electronic solutions. Sales in 2002 were $26.7 billion. Motorola is a global corporate citizen dedicated to ethical business practices and pioneering important technologies that make things smarter and life better for people. These traditions are as important today as they were when the company was founded 75 years ago this year. For more information, please visit: www.motorola.com

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Media Contacts:
Monica Rohleder
Motorola
+1-847-606-1973
monica.rohleder@motorola.com

Liz Tobey
Hill & Knowlton
+1-323-966-5639
mmic@hillandknowlton.com

MOTOROLA and the Stylized M Logo are registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office. All other product or service names are the property of their respective owners. © Motorola, Inc. 2003.