Analysts agree Motorola Inc. still needs to shed its iconic but unprofitable handset phone division, but whether the company will become leaner this year is uncertain.
“When you have such a small market share you need to have something unbelievably hot,” said Scott Testa, a professor at Cabrini College in Philadelphia and an expert on the wireless industry. “A lot of other manufacturers are coming out with Android phones. That’s not going to take them to the Promised Land.”
Mobile manufacturer launches direct attack on Garmin and TomTom with free turn-by-turn direction software.
Nokia has announced that its free maps software will now include turn-by-turn directions for walking and driving. The Ovi Maps application will be compatible with 10 current handsets, including the N97 Mini, E72 and 5800 XPressMusic, and will be pre-loaded on every GPS-enabled handset sold from March 2010. The maps, in 2D & 3D, will all load onto phones either over the air or via a Mac or PC, meaning that a network connection, as is currently required for other mobile phone mapping solutions, is not necessary when they’re in use as a GPS.
In association with mapping firm Navteq, which Nokia has owned since 2007, Ovi Maps will cover 180 countries, and offer turn by turn information for 74 of those, in 46 languages. Traffic data will also be available for 10, including the UK, although its use would form part of a mobile phone tariff. Preloading maps, however, means expensive data roaming charges can be avoided when abroad.
The technology is based on “vectors”, rather than the traditional “bitmap” images used by other maps. This means the images, although of similar appearance, are about half the size, and can be stored and downloaded more easily. Information is included on major landmarks, which are shown in 3D, and the data also incorporates lane and speed camera guidance for vehicles, and shortcuts, such as through public parks, for pedestrians.
Launching the service, Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia’s Executive Vice President, said that offering Ovi Maps free for the life of a Nokia smartphone would act as a way of differentiating the company’s devices in a crowded market place, and allow them to defend higher prices than other manufacturers who did not offer similar services.
Google has indicated, for instance, that it is unlikely to offer turn-by-turn directions on its Nexus One handset when it launches in the UK. The services is available on the Nexus One in America however, and also already on some devices such as the Motorola Milestone in the UK.
Nokia’s developers Forum, which the company says already includes 5 million software developers, will be encouraged to develop applications to augment the contextual search functions built into Ovi Maps. Lonely Planet and the Michelin Guide will also come pre-loaded.
The move is likely to prove a challenge to makers of standalone satnavs such as Garmin and TomTom. Asked how the move could impact on those companies, Mr Vanjoki was bullish: “I would not like to be a shareholder,” he said
Google may not be too interested in giving their US market native app multitouch in the Nexus One, but Motorola aims to please, with CEO Sanjay Jha promising to "deliver multitouch in the majority of our devices."
Going on, he told Laptop Mag "There’s a complex set of factors, not all of them technical," which makes us wonder is he’s referring to Google’s thoughts on multitouch Androids. Google’s motto may be "don’t be evil," but giving European Nexus One owners native multitouch and ignoring other countries is frankly baffling. [Laptop Mag via Phone Arena via Engadget]
Motorola Spites Google, Promises Multitouch For All [Phones] Kat Hannaford Thu, 14 Jan 2010 10:55:23 GMT
LAS VEGAS–On Wednesday, Motorola launched its latest Google Android smartphone to the world, the Motorola Backflip. Scheduled for a global release at the beginning of 2010, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha said the device would be available in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and North America but would not disclose any carriers. Oh gee, it couldn’t possibly be AT&T, which announced 5 upcoming Android smartphones, including one from Motorola, could it?
Motorola Backflip
The Motorola Backflip is a quad-band GSM phone with support for the
The smartphone’s design is really what sets it apart, however. At first glance, the Backflip looks like a sleeker, smaller version of the Motorola Cliq, but instead of a slider design, the opens up like a book. In addition, in its closed state, the full QWERTY keyboard is located on the back. For those concerned about durability, Motorola said the keyboard is strong enough to take a beating and keep on clicking but of course, that remains to be seen.
Motorola Backflip
Another unique feature of the Backflip is the trackpad, which Moto calls Backtrack, located on the back of the display (when the phone is open). It works just like a traditional trackpad, allowing you to navigate through menus, flip through photos, scroll through the home screen panes, and more. It’s certainly an interesting twist, but we’re not completely sold on it. You can also interact with the smartphone through the 3.1-inch HVGA touch screen.
Motorola Backflip
Like the Motorola Cliq, the Backflip uses Motoblur software and though it will launch with Android 1.5, the smartphone will be upgradeable to Android 2.1.
Other highlights of the smartphone include a
5-megapixel camera,
a 3.5mm headphone jack,
2GB internal memory (expandable up to 32GB),
and a full HTML browser.
You can view our hands-on photos of the Motorola Backflip below and get some of our first impressions of the device. There’s a lot we like about the device, but there are also some things we’re weary of but check it out for yourself and let us know what you think!
Andy Rubin’s business card identifies him as the Vice President of Engineering at Google (s GOOG). In reality, he’s the Mountain View, Calif.-based search engine’s mobile chief. From the time Google snapped up his tiny startup, Android, to today, when it officially launched the first Google Phone, Rubin (and his partner Rich Miner) have been behind virtually every mobile move made by the company.
And until very recently, Rubin had maintained that Google wasn’t going to make a Google Phone. So when news of the Nexus One first broke, I was flabbergasted that after all the denials it was actually doing so. To that end, I asked him: How is Google suddenly in the hardware business?
“Google isn’t building hardware,” Rubin said. He noted how Apple’s (s aapl) iPhone typically carries the tag “Designed in California,” which explicitly points to that company’s hardware roots. Not so with Google. “We are not designers and there are no hardware or industrial designers on my team,” said Rubin. Instead they leave it to companies such as HTC, which has made the Nexus One.
More Google Phones to Come
“For the first time, we’re issuing purchasing orders to the manufacturers so we are now their customers,” he added, “which means we can now have more influence on the device.” That influence is quite visible in the Nexus One, as I point out in my review. And Rubin said Google is working with manufacturers in addition to HTC that also want to benefit from the sales push on Google’s web site.
Andy Rubin with Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha at Mobilize 09
Those words won’t placate some of the company’s partners, which according to my sources are livid at Google’s decision to promote the HTC-built device, which works with T-Mobile USA’s 3G network. Motorola (s MOT) and Verizon (s VZ) , which have collectively spent close to $100 million promoting the Android-based Droid, are said to be particularly miffed at this decision to launch the Google Phone. One look at the Nexus One and no one in their right mind would even consider the Droid. More importantly, imagine competing with the company that makes the OS itself.
“People shouldn’t focus too much on the device (Nexus One),” said Rubin. “What’s more important is the strategy behind the devices.” Instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing, Google is simply “going straight to the Google customers,” he said. He believes that such a strategy could fundamentally change the way people buy cell phones — in other words, over the web. Already, as he pointed out, people are buying devices (and gadgets) online.
The way I see it, Google has a couple of major problems: It’s facing a splintering of the Android experience, thanks to the growing number of user experience efforts such as HTC’s Sense. And in order to quickly get traction in the marketplace, Google needs to attract more developers. To overcome these challenges, the company needs to seed the market with what it feels is the device that best showcases Android’s capabilities.
150,000 True Fans
Rubin hopes his company can sell, at the very least, 150,000 Nexus One devices. Why? “Because if there are that many devices out there, you are likely to run into someone with a device somewhere,” he reasoned. To be clear, that number is only applicable to the U.S., even though the device will be available in the UK, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Google won’t have any trouble selling that many devices. There are more than enough fanatical users of the company’s services, such as Gmail and Google Maps, to make that happen. The Nexus One and subsequent Google Phones will continue to be tightly integrated with Google’s services.
Cell Phone As a Platform
When I asked Rubin about some of the shortcomings of the Nexus One and of the Android platform in general, he was candid in admitting that there was still work to be done. “We could have easily seeded the developers with this new device with a higher-resolution screen, but we decided to wait till the announcement was made,” he said. Now that the device has been launched, Google, he said, was looking to aggressively woo developers. Expect it to make some major announcements on that front soon.
The world has changed, Rubin argued. Up until now, the software inside the phone and the web were two different entities living in two different worlds. What Android represents is the ethos of the web brought to the cell phone world. “As a company we iterate a lot and now you have a cell-phone platform that you can quickly iterate upon,” said Rubin. “When were you able to do that on Symbian?” Ouch! (Related: Symbian Executive Rips Into Google’s Android.)
I think that’s what makes Android such as interesting platform, as I explained in my essay, The Androidification of Everything. When I asked Rubin where Android could show up next, he said it could be anywhere — from set-top boxes to large-screen devices, even desktop PCs.
Becoming a mobile-device maker seems like madness, but Google’s not crazy.
Why on earth would Google (GOOG) want to go into the business of making cell phones?
CEO Schmidt presides over an increasingly mobile-oriented Google. Photo: Google.
By now most followers of tech news are aware that the company has been testing a product dubbed the Google Nexus–the highly anticipated “Google phone” set to be launched today. But does Google’s move into territory dominated by specialists like Nokia (NOK) and Motorola (MOT) and consumer electronics stalwarts like Apple (AAPL) and Samsung make sense?
Google is an Internet advertising company, after all, trafficking in search terms and text ads. The company has partnered with myriad handset makers and carriers to bring its Android operating system for mobile devices to consumers. Why would it ever want to bypass its partners, putting out its own phone?
It’s simple: Google is seizing an opportunity to speed up innovation. “No one is going to be able to innovate as quickly as Google can with all these fantastic engineering resources they have plus lots of cash in the bank,” says Forrester Research’s Charles Golvin. “They’re doing this to light the way—to say, ‘here is everything Android can do.”
Nexus = razor blade, Android = razor
There is much excitement about the snazzy Android operating system. It holds the potential to support all kinds of services. Developers are watching it carefully and have plans to create applications for it in the future. But with limited resources, many have not actually abandoned the platforms they’re developing for currently. Says one Boston-based developer, “We’re keeping an eye on it. But we’re sticking with Apple, RIM and Microsoft for now.”
As of third quarter, Android-supported phones only accounted for 5% of the market according to IDC. Compare that to Apple’s iPhone, which has 29% of the market, or RIM’s (RIMM) Blackberry devices, which collectively dominate with 44% of the market. And though developers are excited by the future prospects of Android, many report Apple’s closed platform still makes for a more elegant application—with a lot more potential users. And RIM is the key to the corporate user.
All bets are on Android to catch up over time, but time is a luxury that Google can’t afford in this fast moving market. Sure, dozens of Android-supported phones are being developed, but they are often produced by hardware makers, not software companies. Google has partnered very closely with a number of these companies to bring new features to consumers. Motorola’s Droid, for example, runs Android 2.0 and includes a full GPS system. But they’re not moving fast enough for the Internet search behemoth. By revealing a new device with a speedier response and a number of upgrades, Google shows off what is possible with Android and encourages its partners to adopt the technology.
Going with the Flo?
It’s a familiar play among large tech companies. Consider what the chipmaker Qualcomm (QCOM) has done with FLO TV, a business that aims to provide live television to cellphones. Visit the San Diego campus, and you’ll be given a tour of the television studios that bare a striking resemblance to GE’s CNBC. Qualcomm makes chips and licenses software. It has no interest in getting into the TV business, but CEO Paul Jacobs understands that if his company can seed a TV business on mobile devices, then device makers will buy the special chip required to air the network. Result? Qualcomm sells more chips.
Of course if Qualcomm ends up in the TV business, the company won’t turn down the revenue. And by the same token, it could very well be that Google one day makes so much money off advertising on mobile platforms that it can afford to subsidize devices itself, bypassing the carriers entirely. But a move that disruptive is a long way off. First, Google has to convince an iPhone-obsessed nation that there’s an app for that—on Android.
Motorola must have enjoyed the feel of ropes against their back. There’s no other explanation for the MILESTONE. They obviously needed to be pushed against the ropes to remember what made them the world’s largest manufacturer. It’s been a long road for them, with plenty of milestones. But that last one marks the end of a particularly steep downhill stretch.
We haven’t seen an Android phone generate so much hype since… the first one, the T-Mobile G1. The Motorola MILESTONE seems to be the powerhouse that the Android family needed and obviously many customers were looking forward to.
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Google may not be too interested in giving their US market native app multitouch in the Nexus One, but Motorola aims to please, with CEO Sanjay Jha promising to "deliver multitouch in the majority of our devices."
Andy Rubin’s business card identifies him as the Vice President of Engineering at Google (s GOOG). In reality, he’s the Mountain View, Calif.-based search engine’s mobile chief. From the time Google snapped up his tiny startup, Android, to today, when it officially launched the first Google Phone, Rubin (and his partner Rich Miner) have been behind virtually every mobile move made by the company.
