No matter what article you read about Motorola these days, most pundits claim the handset maker's biggest mistake was not following the Razr with another blockbuster device.

There is some truth to that. But the bigger truth may be that Moto just couldn't move fast enough when it needed to four years ago.

As an interesting New York Times article points out, 2004 may mark the turning point of where Moto stumbled.

The iPod was out and AT&T, realizing its importance, called up its partner to find out what it could offer up in terms of music capabilities in a handset.

There were two choices -- Moto's Rokr, which stored 100 songs and the then-popular Razr. The glitch was that no music player coming for the Razr for at least a year.

So AT&T went with the Rokr -- a savvy move that showed the provider knew where things were heading, but one that failed due to product design.

Yet AT&T keep moving forward and now offers the iPhone.

And Moto? Well we all know how things have gone since then.