Motorola, the iconic mobile-phone company once known for flashy hardware, is resting its comeback attempt on the quality of its software.
Motorola chief executive Sanjay Jha would not go as far to say Motorola is unconcerned with hardware these days, hours after unveiling the forthcoming Motorola Cliq (known as the Dext in Europe) at Mobilize 2009, but the balance has clearly changed with the introduction of Motoblur, a layer of software that sits above the Android operating system and will co-ordinate incoming messages and news feeds on future Motorola handsets.
"Motoblur is going to become very important to Motorola," Jha said. It is more than just software — Motorola is also essentially hosting an online service that will deliver Facebook updates and RSS feeds to individual phones — but it is emblematic of the shift towards software and the internet as the main features in a modern mobile phone.
Unfortunately for Motorola, that era began more than two years ago with the launch of the iPhone, and the company has been struggling ever since.
In the pre-iPhone era, Motorola was a hit, with sleek phones such as the Razr that turned heads, but after people started to realise what they could do with sophisticated phone software constantly connected to the internet, the Razr became an afterthought. Motorola has struggled ever since, seriously considering getting out of the phone business altogether.
Jha declared a year ago that Motorola was going to focus on two operating systems: Android and Windows Mobile. With Windows Mobile development falling further and further behind its rivals, it has turned to Android for the Dext, the first smartphone it has launched in some time that has a realistic chance of competing in the modern market.
Unlike the G1 and Ion — perhaps the best-known Android phones at the moment — the Dext features a Motorola-designed homepage that allows users to see a flood of notifications from things such as social-networking applications, news feeds, and the standard voice calls, text messages and emails. It invites comparisons to Palm's WebOS and Synergy software, with users selecting different widgets from a home page to rotate in and out of Facebook, Google Maps, email or voicemail.
Motorola designed nearly all of Motoblur, and it has been in the works since 2007, according to Business Week. It struck up a partnership with Google and Android because it realised Google could do a better job of co-ordinating third-party software developers and application sales than Motorola could do on its own, Jha said.
It is not just Motorola who will get to play with Motoblur, either: outside developers will also be able to get their hands on Motoblur with the eventual release of APIs for the software, Jha told Infoworld. This could potentially complicate matters with Google and Android, but Jha told ZDNet UK's sister site, CNET News.com that Motorola will be very careful not to fragment Android with incompatibilities.
Regardless of whether people respond to Motorola's social-networking marketing strategy with the Dext, Motoblur will be the underpinning for a series of phones tailored to different types of users, Jha said. Motorola is betting the company — or at least the mobile division — on its own blend of software and online services spread across a series of phones, rather than trying to mimic Apple's approach in producing one phone for everyone.
Will it work? Without knowing key details such as price and performance at this early date, it is hard to say whether the Dext will be enough of a success to rekindle interest in Motorola. Jha declined to comment on pricing, indicating that decision rests with exclusive US partner T-Mobile. He did hint that pricing for the Dext would be "creative", letting it rest with that statement.
The other big question is whether Motorola is committed to the mobile business at the corporate level for the long haul. Jha said that it was, although he cautioned that things could change in the future. At the moment, it probably does not matter, since Motorola is unlikely to find a buyer for its mobile business in its current condition, and will need a series of hits in order to make the property interesting to outside investors again.
Motorola's efforts on the software front over the past several years have lagged that of the competition. It could be argued that the poor software on the Rokr — an iTunes phone that was overshadowed at its own launch event in 2005 — spurred Apple's development of the iPhone and the reinvention of what it means to be a smartphone.
Jha seemed confident that the company has turned a corner. "Experiences matter a lot more as we go to the mobile internet," he said, in comparison to the flashy hardware for which Motorola had become known.
However, Motorola said essentially the same thing in 2006 and in 2007, and has nothing to show for it. Three years later, the world is now a very different place.
