Post by William Moss

More than a decade ago, when I worked at Motorola Mobility, I was part of an early technology re-shoring effort. After Google bought Moto, in 2012, I moved back to the U.S. after nearly two decades in Asia. (Yes, I re-shored myself, but that isn’t what I’m talking about.) Our Google-era flagship was the Moto X, at the time a wonderful little smartphone. We also very loudly announced plans to assemble Moto X in the U.S. I helped with the PR to unveil our manufacturing operations in Fort Worth and, nine months later, I helped with the PR to much less loudly disclose the shuttering of that operation. That was a different era and Motorola had specific challenges that complicated the effort, including that it was an underdog in a super-competitive industry and Moto X was a great phone but not a big seller. The big seller was the capable but value-priced Moto G. But re-shoring is back in the headlines and a couple of weeks ago Fortune published a fascinating retrospective of the attempt to make Moto X in the U.S. That prompted me to recall my own journey into and later out of the smartphone industry and my work on that project (there is a link to the Fortune article in my post). Shout out to my amazing Moto PR teammates from…can it be a decade ago? Barbara Liss, Kristine Mulford, Danielle McNally, Nicole Thomas, Kira Lee Lakin, Christa Gorham, Kathryn Hanley, Kimberly Beals Gabriel Madway, Adrienne Hayes and a few others not on LinkedIn. We had some good times. Who am I forgetting? https://lnkd.in/gHRdxj-9