Motorola's Android Phone: Too Little Too Late?

Lots of buzz on the Web about Motorola's eventual Android-based touch-screen phone, but Motorola (MOT) has been talking about it openly for a while. Apparently Motorola has come far enough along to talk specifics with carriers, but the phone isn't supposed to be out until the second quarter of 2009, putting Moto's phone at least 9 months behind the first Android phone -- forever in cell phone years.

 

Over the summer, Moto co-CEO Sanjay Jha (soon after he was hired) told me: "We're already working on a touch screen phone with a QWERTY keyboard. In China we sell three devices with a touch screen." He added: "We recognize the challenges in front of us and have a plan."

 

Moto's other co-CEO, Greg Brown, added: "Sanjay has a unique background with Google and Android. We're evaluating the next evolution around open operating systems."

 

Motorola, though, has been talking to Google (GOOG) about Android since the tenure of the previous CEO, Ed Zander, who left a year ago. Zander used to work at Sun with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and last fall Zander said he'd been talking to Google about what was then only known as the "Google phone."

 

While Motorola can stir up some excitement with an Android phone, the company is still burdened by building phones on too many different platforms. Some Moto phones are still running a Moto operating system called P2K, which was supposed to die in 2004. Some run Windows Mobile. A lot of underlying software gets tweaked for specific phones and specific carriers. All this adds to Moto's time to getting a phone to market. (Nokia, by contrast, builds all its phones on one software platform.)

 

Jha is trying to untangle this mess, but it's still a mess.

 

In the meantime, there's speculation that economic conditions are killing Moto's chances for spinning off its handset division as planned.

Comments

[kris23:]

I would be curious to see a MOT smartphone. In my history of cell phones I have always gravitated more to MOT phones as I have found them to be the more reliable for me. I think this could be a good venture for the company, there already forecasted to close up today and a new product could help bring MOT back some limelight.

2008 Oct 20 01:39 PM

[css1971:]

Motorola is seriously messed up internally. There are a dozen different little fiefdoms all fighting one another. You can see the results in the product line and in the bottom line. Nokia is going to eat them for breakfast when they seriously enter the US market.

Basically, the CEO needs to start firing people.

2008 Oct 20 02:34 PM

[Winst:]

Nokia won't do much in the US, it isn't their type of market. The Nokia phones are built for Europe and low cost phones in Asia. For example the US loves flip phones, but Nokia has always struggled with flip phones.

The authors assertion that Motorola is 9 months behind on Android is odd. HTC rushed an Android phone out, before the software was fully ready. You can only build an Android phone with one chip from Qualcom, Google just can't support more than one chip right now because the OS is still being developed. So a Q209 lauch is not late at all. By this time next year the G1 would have been forgotten. Whether Motorola is in the right position by than remains to be seen, but to say they are late shows a lack of understanding of the market.

2008 Oct 21 11:02 AM

[mollytjm:]

i think the iphone was the game changer. these big established companies sat back and told each other that apple coudln't do it because it was too tough a market to break into. that cost innovation momentum...death to a tech company.

2008 Oct 21 02:39 PM

[TinyTim:]

css: Motorola is seriously messed up internally. There are a dozen different little fiefdoms all fighting one another.

people have been saying that about Moto for 20 years. not surprised it hasn't changed.

Moto has been traditionally way late to market. There are numerous examples- first cpu chip, Iridium, digital phone.

most "reliablity" is actually a function of the carrier. re physical reliability- I have a drawer full of broken Razr's from my teenagers.

In the end, the only thing worth selling from the phone div will be some IP, mostly in design. This may take down Freescale as well.

fuggetaboutem

2008 Oct 21 05:04 PM

[Abdul:]

i find cool photo new phone Motorola ZN 300 with OS Android
g-phone.in.ua/main/281...

I like phones like this

Feb 02 06:01 AM