Motorola RAZR (pronounced / reizer / "razor”) is a series of clamshell mobile phones (also known as flip phones) by Motorola, and is one of the series in the 4 LTR line. They were first developed in July 2003 and were released in the market in the third quarter of 2004.
Because of its striking appearance and thin profile, it was initially marketed as an exclusive fashion phone, but within a year, its price was lowered and it was wildly successful, selling over 50 million units by July 2006.
Over the RAZR's four-year run, Motorola sold more than 130 million units, becoming the best-selling clamshell phone in the world (and is still today).
The RAZR series was marketed until July 2007, when the succeeding Motorola RAZR 2 series was released. Marketed as a sleeker and more stable design of the RAZR, the RAZR 2 included more features, improved telephone audio quality, and a touch sensitive external screen. The new models were the V8, the V9, and the V9m.However, the RAZR 2 sales were only half of the original in the same period.
Because Motorola relied so long upon the RAZR and its derivatives and was slow to develop new products in the growing market for feature-rich touch screen and 3G phones, the RAZR's appeal declined while rival offerings like the LG Chocolate, BlackBerry, and iPhone captured consumer attention, leading Motorola to eventually drop behind Samsung and LG in market share for mobile phones. Motorola's strategy of grabbing market share by selling tens of millions of low-cost RAZRs cut into margins and resulted in heavy losses in the cellular division.
In October 2011, Motorola unveiled a Smartphone version of the RAZR called the Droid RAZR for Verizon, otherwise it would be known simply as 'RAZR'.
