It was big news in our world when on October 27, 2014 Zebra Technologies completed its acquisition of Motorola Solutions’ Enterprise business. With Zebra swallowing up the even bigger Motorola, integration of the two global leaders’ businesses left little room for error. We can gladly report Zebra has moved quickly and made an impressive amount of decisions and headway in a very short amount of time. As the two firms become one, restructuring and combining various departments and aligning the product lines around a singular new vision has been challenging and so far well-received.
In the beginning, Zebra’s goal for the acquisition was to optimize its value chain by allowing it to offer a broader portfolio of products to what were essentially the same end users. Zebra CEO, Anders Gustafsson, saw the natural synergy between the two organizations and has now optimized those synergies in its integration and go-to-market strategies. On the other hand, he also recognizes areas where there may not be a natural fit, and will allow those areas to operate separately.
In a recent press release, Gustafsson stated:
“Where we have remained separate is in the R&D and development side, because the product lines are complementary, not competitive, and over time Motorola’s competency in mobile computing, data collection and wireless networks are a unique skill set for us. So we are maintaining separate engineering and product development organizations, but we come together with a common global sales and marketing organization. …We’re now number one in mobile computing, number one in data collection, and number one in printing. We have a very large global service organization. …And we have quite a bit of customer loyalty.”
Gustafsson also referenced the Symbol technologies brand, noting that over time the Symbol brand will be entirely phased out and re-branded with the Zebra Technologies name.
Contact AbeTech to answer any questions you have about the Zebra/Motorola integration and how it will affect the products and services you use.
