Motorola brand name to be phased out, to be called 'Moto by Lenovo'

Lenovo acquired Motorola Mobility from Google in October 2014. In April 2015, the company revealed that Lenovo and Motorola would remain two separate brands. This is about to change as Lenovo is planning to phase out the Motorola branding from smartphones.

At this year's CES Motorola COO Rick Osterloh revealed to CNET that Lenovo and Motorola is unifying its mobile businesses under the Lenovo brand. As per Osterloh, the Lenovo will slowly phase out the Motorola brand name, however the Moto moniker will be retained as 'Moto by Lenovo', and will be used for high-end Lenovo devices. The budget devices will be released under the Vibe brand. The company will also retain the iconic batwing 'M' logo and will be used on Moto devices.

While this will mark the end of an era for Motorola, a brand credited with introducing the world's first mobile device, the brand name won't completely disappear from the archives, as it will be used in the organizational setting and there will be a separate Moto division.

Osterloh also said that his team would be taking over all the mobile operations at Motorola, in order to leverage both the companies strengths for Lenovo's benfit. This will help the company to offer Moto devices in markets where only Lenovo devices are popular and vice versa.

Both Lenovo and Motorola have been performing well in the market. Motorola has gained fan following and won accolades for its Moto G, Moto X and Moto E series smartphone, while Lenovo recently grabbed everyone's attention with the Vibe K4 Note.