Motorola Android on CNN Money
CNN Money has a good article about Motorola and their attempts at the smart phone market.
Here are some points from it:
Jha, 46, an engineer who joined Motorola (MOT, Fortune 500) from wireless chip maker Qualcomm in August 2008, has bona fide technology chops. And it wasn’t lost on the crowd that Jha had picked Apple’s backyard to reveal the devices that would form the centerpiece of his strategy for turning around the company’s moribund handset business. Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) even sent its mobile czar, Andy Rubin, to sprinkle some extra high-tech pixie dust on Jha’s presentation.
The mood quickly turned to disappointment. After describing two upcoming phones, Jha demonstrated only one: a smartphone with a slide-out keyboard, a touchscreen, and software that pulls together different social-networking sites.
If the device was cool-looking, the audience couldn’t tell. It was barely visible in Jha’s fist as he waved it aloft. Then he announced the full name: Cliq with Motoblur. (It will be branded “Dext with Motoblur” outside the U.S.) Huh? “So is ‘blur’ the name of the phone or the software?” a woman in the back row asked me.
With so much riding on its new handsets, such confusion spells trouble for Motorola, based in Schaumburg, Ill. (For the record, Cliq is the name of the phone; Motoblur is the software.)
More than 20 Android-powered phones will come to market in the next year alone, and many of the manufacturers at least aspire to rival the iPhone or take down Research in Motion’s Blackberry. (For more on leading smartphones, see “BlackBerry vs. iPhone.”)
If Motorola can’t blow consumers’ minds with a true breakthrough of a product — the kind of gadget high-schoolers beg their parents to buy for them or the “it” device that makes executives abandon their BlackBerrys — its devices could end up collecting dust on retailers’ shelves, along with dozens of other wannabes.
Silicon Valley remains skeptical. Tech blogs slammed the San Francisco presentation as short on gee-whiz details. Jha himself admitted it took analysts and reviewers more than 15 minutes before they understood the value of the Cliq. (Google’s Rubin calls the phone the “first state-of-the-art example” of how to incorporate Android in a device.) Jha thinks they’ll also like what they see in a few weeks when the company launches its second Android-powered phone, this one for business users.
The final judges, of course, will be consumers. If the Cliq and subsequent phones click with customers, Motorola’s stock (and Jha’s bank account) could be on the rise.
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