Motorola to call on Google in cell overhaul

Motorola is expected to place a heavy bet that Android phones with Google's mobile operating system can turn around its struggling cell phone division.

Sanjay Jha, Motorola co-CEO

(Credit: Qualcomm)

Sanjay Jha, the company's co-chief executive and head of mobile devices, is expected to focus on Google's operating system in an overhaul of the cell phone division that includes additional job cuts and the elimination of four platforms, according to a report Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal. Jha is expected to detail his plans as early as Thursday when the company announces its earnings.

Motorola is expected to trim the number of operating systems it uses to three: Android for its midtier devices, as well as Microsoft's Windows Mobile and its own platform, P2K.

Business Week reported earlier this week that Motorola was prepping a social-networking smartphone based on Android that will debut in the second quarter of next year. Motorola's Android phone, according to the report, is expected to feature a touchscreen similar to Apple's popular iPhone, as well as a slide-out QWERTY keyboard that allows people to connect to such social-networking sites as MySpace and Facebook. It is unclear how similar it will be to T-Mobile USA's newly released G1 phone, manufactured by HTC, which also uses Android.

Motorola tapped Jha in August to be co-chief executive and head of the mobile devices business after announcing earlier that it will separate the mobile devices from the rest of the company. Jha, 45, spent the past 14 years at cell phone chipmaker Qualcomm, where he most recently ran the company's CDMA division.

In August, Motorola surprised Wall Street with a small profit for the second quarter. But the company's handset division continued to drag on earnings. Most of the gains in the second quarter came from cost cutting and from its Internet and cable businesses. Still, the company managed to hang on to its market share position, a surprising result, as many analysts had expected No. 1 Nokia and No. 2 Samsung to pick up share.

[patdev1]

I think this is a good move by Motorola, I would bet on other phone companies will start to consolidate their offerings and focus specifically on one platform. Android seems to be the one that could be the winner by the looks of things.

More discussions at www.androidmobileforum.com

[elllroy]

smartphone market 2010: android 55%, apple 20%, symbian 15%, rim 10%,
windows mobile: dead.

[Kwasiowusu]

Get back to me when you wake up from dreamland.
Nokia sells 40% of all cell phones on the planet. They own Symbian. Android will never even come close to Symbian in market share..
Google's "Android" is going to be like practically every other Google project outside search..its going to go exactly nowhere.
As for Motorolla, they have been losing market share for years. No operating system from anyone is going to save Motorola. People don't buy cell phones because of an operating system. They buy because the phone itself is well designed, "cool" looking" duns some of the apps they need, is easy tpo use, reliable, etc etc.

[techforward]

This seems like a really bad decision. Think about what Mot does vis-a-vis the cell phone business - primarily they are a reseller of phones manufactured by others. Sure, they spec the phones, certify them on the carriers networks, and provide customer support. I can't recall a single phone they developed (software/UI-wise) in-house that received rave reviews. They should have jumped on the windows mobile platform and spent their time adding software-based features, or SaaS features that made the phone really useful rather than trying to develop new phones or jumping on the 'too new' adriod. Once again, they are spreading resources too thin, and infighting will land them in last place. (Compare that to someone like Apple who has a laser-like focus, and the expertise to drive OS/X into every device they manufacture) Three phone platforms is still too many.

[brian.lee]

You know what's wrong with most handset makers... is that they pander to the carriers demands which is basically to lock down the phone and charge users for everything they can possibly charge for. Instead of catering to consumers who are the ones actually using the product. It doesn't matter what platform you use, if you can't do anything with the phone beyond making calls and sending sms with out paying an arm and a leg for DRM'd music no one is going to buy your phone. The other problem is once handset makers have a good selling phone instead of innovating and giving their users more features they just rehash the same old thing. It's what Palm, RIM, and MOTO did with the Krazar, Razar line of phones.

Palm/RIM could have done so much better if it was the first handset maker to put WiFi on the Treo line.

I owned a Treo 650 still do it's a great device still a perfectly usable phone even today.