Lenovo rides the nostalgia wave, promises to bring back Motorola name

Well, hello Motorola.

After being unceremoniously killed by its Chinese owner Lenovo in 2016, the Motorola brand name might be coming back.

This is according to Cnet, which spoke to Motorola Chairman and President Aymar de Lencquesaing on Sunday.

According to de Lencquesaing, the brand name will return because Lenovo now has "clarity on how we present ourselves."

We suspect, however, that it might have something to do with the buzz generated by BlackBerry and Nokia, both of which have successfully played the nostalgia card at the Mobile World Congress this year

For consumers, this might not be a shocking change; Lenovo phased out the brand Motorola in favor of the very similar Moto, and a lot of people I spoke with never really noticed the change -- or simply kept calling the phones Motorola.

The Motorola brand will start being tied to new phones gradually, on a per-country basis, but it will eventually return to all the markets where the company has a presence.

In the interview, de Lencquesaing also confirmed that Motorola does not currently plan to release another smartwatch, saying these devices have "too few practical uses."

Originally a U.S. company that launched some legendary phones in the naughts, Motorola Mobility (basically a direct successor to Motorola, which had split its business into two parts in 2011) was acquired by Google in August.

Google subsequently sold Motorola Mobility (sans most of its patents) to Lenovo in 2014.

A long-time top phone maker, Lenovo's Motorola struggled in 2016, dropping out of the top 5 biggest smartphone maker list after the first quarter of the year (and never returning).