Home > Views > Blogs > Tech Observer > Moto Android Phone: No Surprise, and Very Late
EMAIL
PRINT
RSS
SHARE
TEXT SIZE:
SHARE
Send a copy to me

Separate multiple email addresses (max 20) with commas.

0/1500

Main
Six Apart CEO: Down Economy Boosts B...   Yahoo's Lame Layoff Excuse
Oct 20 2008 10:38AM EDT

Moto Android Phone: No Surprise, and Very Late

Kevin Maney writes: Lots of buzz on the Web about Motorola's eventual Android-based touch-screen phone, but Motorola 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 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.

See more in

Loading...
Add Your Comment
View
 

Thank you for registering as a Portfolio.com Insider. Your comment has been added.

Create Your Public Profile


Recent Blog Posts

Archive

Previous
Jan
2009
Next


Also in Portfolio.com
Most Read
Most Emailed
Recently Commented

Newsletter Sign-Up
Inside Portfolio.com
In This Issue
Subscribe
Newsletter Sign-Up
Inside Portfolio.com
In This Issue
Subscribe