Before touch sensitive smartphones were all the rage, what cellphones were popular? Unless you’re a little kid you know that the Motorola RAZR was the darling of the cellphone world. Originally released as a luxury phone for $600, its price was lowered, allowing Motorola to sell over 130 million phones throughout its 4 years in production. Although the phone was a sales success, Motorola sold millions of these clamshell phones at prices, which resulted in losses for the manufacturer.

It seems like a new Droid phone is released every other day, but Motorola is hoping that consumers still have an affinity for the RAZR brand, even though touch screen smartphones like the iPhone helped make the original clamshell phone an afterthought. Regardless, this holiday season, it was announced that the RAZR would be reincarnated in the form of the Motorola Droid RAZR, a touch screen smartphone that is compatible with 4G LTE, is Android based, and includes an 8 MP camera. Most importantly, the Droid RAZR will be the thinnest smartphone in the world at just 7.1mm. For comparison, the iPhone 4S is 9.3mm.

Although the re-release of the former iconic phone, in today’s supped off smartphone market, will generate sales off the brand name alone, the big picture is that Motorola missed the ball. From 2004 to 2007 Motorola was trying to sell the same device without any innovation. Along came Apple with the iPhone in 2007 and blew away the RAZR, along with every other competitor.

Motorola, had it continued to innovate and not play it safe with the same product for several years, could have come out with an iPhone like product. It didn’t, and the lesson the telecommunications teaches us is to never settle.