A few weeks ago I found myself on the eighteenth floor of the historic Merchandise Mart building in downtown Chicago, surrounded by dozens of anxious journalists awaiting a press conference for Motorola’s new phone. We were in a room splashed with vivid hues and packed with chairs of varying shapes and sizes, arranged in a semi-circle pattern. A nearby wall had a graffiti-like mural that read, somewhat perplexingly, “We want more” and “Thank you.” At the front of the room was a makeshift stage flanked by two televisions. A giant Ma Batwings “M” was plastered on each display.几周前的一天，在芝加哥历史悠久的商业市场大厦18楼，我和其他几十位记者惊恐等候着摩托罗拉（Motorola）新品发布会揭幕。那间屋子的墙上涂满了各种艳丽的颜色，形状大小各异的椅子围住一个半圆，簇拥着舞台。我旁边的一面墙上所画着类似于涂鸦的壁画，上面写出着让人有些困惑的两句话：“我们想更加多”和“谢谢你。
”屋子前方搭乘着一个临时舞台，旁边摆着两台电视，上面各表明着一个像蝙蝠翅膀一样的“M”字母巨型Logo。Welcome to the new, soon-to-be Lenovo-owned Motorola—it’s surprisingly like the old one.青睐回到焕然一新的摩托罗拉——它迅速就将归属于误解（Lenovo）旗下，虽然它像极了过去那个摩托罗拉。As I waited for the proceedings to begin, I reflected on how much Motorola, long a stalwart of the U.S. electronics industry, had impacted my life. Sure, most people associate the name with the pioneering radio giant it once was. But, owing to the nature of cellular technology and mobile phones, Motorola has played an integral part in many people’s daily lives. For example, in high school I had a job selling cell phones, and I recall Motorola’s StarTAC being a tough sell. (It had a steep price tag.) Still, I was able to move inventory, a sign of things to come. Years later, I worked for Verizon Wireless, where I found myself bewildered at how well the Motorola Razr still sold well a full two years—eons in technology—after it arrived on the market. For much of my life, Motorola was a giant in technology. That’s not quite the case today.趁着等候发布会开始的工夫，我回想了一下作为美国电子行业一杆大旗的摩托罗拉公司多年来是怎样影响我的生活的。
当然，一驳回摩托罗拉这个品牌，大多数人马上会回想当年那个叱咤风云的无线电巨头。由于蜂窝技术和移动电话的特性，摩托罗拉曾是很多人生活中一个最重要组成部分。比如在高中时，我曾腊过一阵买手机的工作，我忘记当时摩托罗拉的StarTAC手机较为无以买（因为它的价格十分低）。
不过最后我还是把存货都卖出去了，这是当时手机行业将步入一个大发展的可行性迹象。几年后，我转入美国无线运营商Verizon Wireless公司工作，我找到摩托罗拉的Razr手机在上市整整两年后仍然买得十分好，觉得是令人费解——两年的时间在科技界可以说道真是就像一个朝代那么久远。在我人生的大部分时间里，摩托罗拉都是当之无愧的科技巨头，但如今它早就不始当年的风光了。(In 2011, the company split into a mobile devices business, Motorola Mobility, and an infrastructure business, Motorola Solutions. They share only a name; Motorola Mobility, after a brief period under Google, will soon be owned by Lenovo.)2011年，摩托罗拉分化成一家移动设备公司——摩托罗拉移动（Motorola Mobility），和一家基础设施公司——摩托罗拉解决方案（Motorola Solutions）。
二者分享的只有“摩托罗拉”这个品牌。后来摩托罗拉移动被谷歌（Google）一段时间并购，而今迅速就将被联想控股。But back to the event at hand. Rick Osterloh, the newly-appointed president of Motorola Mobility, took the stage wearing a smart watch on his left wrist. “Choose to have the freedom to choose,” he declared. It would turn out to be the day’s theme. Osterloh and company went on to introduce two new phones, the Moto X and Moto G, that could be customized front to back. They introduced a highly-anticipated Google Android-based watch, theMoto 360, which came in different colors and with various bands. Finally, they showed off the Moto Hint, a futuristic Bluetooth headset, available in an assortment of colors and materials.再行返回这次发布会上来。
摩托罗拉移动新任首裁里克o奥斯特洛左手戴着一支智能手表踏上舞台。他喊“自由选择你的自由选择”，这句口号也出了当天发布会的主题。奥斯特洛讲解了两款新手机Moto X和Moto G，这两款手机的所有组件都可以自定义。另外摩托罗拉还公布了一款备受瞩目的安卓（Android）智能手表——Moto 360，用户可以自由选择有所不同颜色和多款表带。
最后，摩托罗拉展出了一款名为Moto Hint，极具未来主义风格的蓝牙耳机，它也可以自由选择有所不同的颜色和材质。The new Moto X, in particular, was notable because it was the company’s second shot at introducing a market-moving device. The first model of the phone, the company’s flagship model, launched in late 2013. It was Motorola’s attempt to lay claim to a new supremacy—the handset was competitive, customizable, affordable, and assembled in the United States. Despite always-on voice commands and an all-day battery, the phone never gained traction, and always seemed to be on sale. When his presentation was over, I pressed Osterloh on why the phone’s price seemed to be in a constant flux. “We learned a lot about what it took to succeed in the premium smartphone business when we launched the Moto X,” he told me. “For us, we found the sweet spot was about one- to two-hundred dollars below Samsung and Apple.” As such, the new Moto X retails at $499 without contract, about $150 lower than comparable Apple or Samsung devices.新的Moto X是摩托罗拉企图在手机市场力挽狂澜的第二次发力。
作为摩托罗拉的旗舰手机，第一代的MotoX公布于2013年年底。这款具备竞争力，可以自定义的手机价格低廉，而且是在美国装配的。尽管它可以随时用于语音掌控功能，电池续航也可以反对一整天，但它自始至终没什么市场吸引力，而且样子总是在降价。
等到奥斯特洛的介绍完后，我回答他为什么Moto X的价格总是在波动，他问道：“当我们发售Moto X的时候，我们做到了大量工作，研究如何在高端智能手机市场获得成功。我们找到它的最佳价格点是高于三星（Samsung）或苹果（Apple）100到200美元。”因此新的Moto X的裸机零售价为499美元，比苹果或三星的同级产品较低了150美元左右。
Another theme that echoed during the presentation was that of “Pure Android.” Awash in a sea of customized versions of Google’s Android mobile operating system, Motorola has chosen to take the foundation of code Google releases to its partners and leave it mostly untouched. The company sees it as a point of differentiation. It touts it as a “Vanilla Android” experience, perhaps the first time in the history of blinking, buzzing consumer electronics in which “plain” was equated with “preferred.” The result, it says, is a faster, leaner device that’s capable of receiving major software updates sooner than the more customized phones on offer by every other manufacturer.在这次介绍中，另一个取得普遍反响的主题是所谓的“洁净版安卓”。在安卓系统的机海大军中，各家厂商的订做安卓版本也是不计其数，摩托罗拉则自由选择了谷歌获取给各大厂商的完整代码，完全原封未动。摩托罗拉或许指出“原汁原味”也是一个差异点。
它把安卓的这个版本称作“香草安卓”（Vanilla Android），这有可能也是习惯骗酷炫，玩游戏噱头的消费电子产业第一次把“原生版”与“更佳”划等号。摩托罗拉回应，这个原生版系统需要比其他各大厂商的自定义系统更慢地取得最重要软件改版。Steve Horowitz, Motorola’s senior vice president of software, was insistent that the company’s restrained tweaks to Android could not be matched by any competitor. “One of things that I like, frankly, are features that people don’t even know are features,” he told me. He’s referring to a new feature in which you merely wave your hand over the phone’s display to silence an alarm or incoming call, rather than press, tap, or swipe as on other phones. “It’s almost like a natural gesture—’Oh, stop it,’ and it just works,” he said. It’s a neat parlor trick.摩托罗拉高级软件副总裁史蒂夫o霍洛维茨否认，摩托罗拉仅次于程度地保有了原装安卓系统，这是其他任何竞争对手所无法比拟的。他对我回应：“坦率地说道，我最喜欢的一点是，这部手机上有一些人们甚至不告诉是某种功能的功能。
”比如Moto X的一项新功能是，当闹钟听见或者有电话时，你只要用手挥过显示屏上方就可以静音，而不必像其它手机一样必须又按又划的。他回应：“它真是就像一个自然而然的手势——‘噢，慢停车吧’，然后它就停下来了。”变得十分有逼格。
Whether such subtleties are enough to send the masses back to the store and pay a premium for a Motorola device remains to be seen. The company continues to be in transition, and that narrative has hijacked most everything related to the products it makes. Its new and highly touted Texas assembly plant is expected to close as final assembly moves to China, Lenovo’s home. The Midwestern company is still recovering from its whirlwind marriage to (and divorce from) that beacon of Silicon Valley, Google. And the Lenovo deal isn’t even expected to close until 2015, leaving it in limbo for the rest of the year. If its executive team can put all the corporate drama behind it and focus once again on making compelling devices—Droid, anyone?—they could very well take advantage of a lot of latent goodwill for the company, at least in the U.S.但是，这些别出心裁的功能能否更有大批消费者返回摩托罗拉的柜台，并心甘情愿地花高价卖一部摩托罗拉手机，还有待仔细观察。摩托罗拉目前仍正处于转型阶段，但这次艰苦的转型也完全“挟持”了它旗下生产的所有产品。随着摩托罗拉的最后一条组装线迁到误解的老家——中国，曾多次被高调宣传的坐落于德克萨斯州的摩托罗拉新的工厂也将重开。另外，摩托罗拉现在还没从跟硅谷大鳄谷歌的“闪婚闪离”中恢复元气。
误解并购摩托的交易预计之前2015年才能已完成，因此，从现在到年底这段时间，摩托罗拉都将正处于进退两难的处境。如果公司的高管团队可以把并购大戏再行放到一旁，全力研发有吸引力的设备——比如新的Droid手机，那么最少在美国，它还可以利用深埋在人们心底的“情怀”再行赚到上一笔。Motorola has the freedom to choose. Now it just needs to do it.摩托罗拉享有自由选择的权利。
现在它只必须放开手作出自由选择。
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