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Tuesday September 15, 2009
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Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha told a financial analysts' conference today that he's in talks with carriers other than T-Mobile to sell the new Android-powered Cliq phone, according to the Dow Jones newswires.
This isn't a surprise - all cell-phone manufacturers are always in talks with all the carriers about everything, and if they aren't in talks, they want to be in talks.
But the timing and context of this announcement are very interesting indeed. When Motorola announced the Cliq last week, many observers thought they would announce two Android phones. The two phones were supposed to be the T-Mobile Cliq and a long-awaited Motorola Android phone for Verizon Wireless that pretty much everyone in the industry knows is coming.
But the Verizon phone never showed, and Verizon isn't talking about it. This has yanked one of the legs out from under Motorola's resurgence story, where they hoped to have a big, multi-carrier comeback with multiple operators and devices. Verizon's intransigence may also have helped contribute to what our editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff said was an oddly disorganized launch presentation for the Cliq.
Jha's agreement with Verizon - assuming there is one - has gagged him; he can't talk about his Verizon deal. So he's left saying his company is "fairly hopeful we will begin to engage with all the U.S. operators." What he's probably thinking, meanwhile, is, "where the heck is our Verizon phone?"
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September 15, 2009 1:58 PM
Verizon’s silence on Android is disappointing, but predictable. Verizon placed its bet on RIM and the Storm, and sees all of its other smartphones as merely a hedge against that wager. If Verizon had appeared onstage with Motorola, that would have been seen as a vote of no-confidence on the Storm 2. RIM—and its line of stodgy, but profitable Blackberries—wouldn’t have been too happy about that and Verizon isn’t about to kill its golden goose.
But with the emergence of Android, RIM’s salad days are coming to a close, whether Verizon has figured it out or not. So Verizon will announce their two Android phones before long, with little fanfare. They won’t go out of their way to help any one hardware manufacturer, because no one has a monopoly on Android. Only when their Android products start running circles around their RIM products will they realize they hitched their cart to the wrong horse and start making a little more noise about Android.
September 15, 2009 4:30 PM
I agree with Drew that Verizon is just too married to RIM and the Storm (and subsequently the Storm 2), although I hesitate a little more to draw the same conclusions about the bright future of Android and so forth.
That being said though, I think that Verizon will have to begrudgingly accept Android as a platform sooner or later - it's current smartphone lineup is absolutely abysmal, and if you're a Verizon customer looking for a device you have control over your choices are Blackberry or Windows Mobile - and that's it. It's pretty horrific as-is.
September 16, 2009 6:27 AM
Motorola's Cliq has a number of innovative and cool features, but ultimately lacks the chemistry to capture any significant portion of the smartphone market or return lost industry relevance to Motorola.