Sad face: Motorola Mobility won’t be called Motorola anymore (Update)

Man, talk about the end of an era. Motorola Mobility, sometimes referred to as Motorola by folks who forget that there’s also a Motorola Solutions, is about to go through a rebranding. Go figure, seems something drastic had to change under its new parent company, Lenovo.

CNET spoke with Motorola chief operating officer Rick Osterloh, who explained that the company will soon take on the moniker “Moto by Lenovo.”

Yuck, what a boring name that doesn’t seem to encompass the exciting brand well-loved by American consumers. To me, it seems like Lenovo is going to use “Moto by Lenovo” to bring its brand to the U.S., where consumers mostly know it for its computer business.

Goodbye Motorola, hello Moto by Lenovo.

Update: Motorola issued the following statement following news of the brand change:

Motorola Mobility continues to exist as a Lenovo company and is the engineering and design engine for all of our mobile products. However, for our product branding we will utilize a dual brand strategy across smartphone and wearables going forward using Moto and Vibe globally. “Motorola” hasn’t been used on our products since the launch of the original Moto X in 2013.