Motorola's Handset Business On The Brink?
from the going,-going... dept
Anybody that's followed the fortunes of Motorola's mobile-phone unit over the years knows it's been a story of ups and downs. The company has had a number of blockbuster hits over the years, like the StarTAC and the RAZR, but hasn't been able to fill in the gaps between them with other successes. Now, Phone Scoop is reporting that the company is preparing to lay off up to half its staff. In addition, the company will only release a dozen devices this year, and it's dropping the Windows Mobile platform, favoring Android instead for its smartphones. The writing has been on the wall for Motorola for a while, as it struggled to follow up the iconic RAZR with another hit. Coupled with the current economic slowdown, it looks like Motorola's handset business could be headed for the deadpool, unless a buyer emerges for it. Perhaps that should be "buyer" -- there's been a lot of talk that Moto would have to pay somebody to take the business off its hands.
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doesn't really surprise me
I recently bought another american phone, a sonim xp1. And I do see similarities. A poor feature set, mediocre (motorola) to very poor user interface (sonim) but most importantly, absolutely horrible customer service. Motorola has a website with more eyecandy than content, a website that tries so hard to be young and popular that it's next to impossible to navigate. Sonim doesn't even spend any money on that, they do a tiny bit of advertising and that's it, they just don't care about their customer.
I don't regret choosing these phones, I like the size of the motorola and I like the durability of the sonim. But when these two reach the end of their service life it's unlikely that I will put up with the whims of these two companies again.
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Startac anyone?
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the Q isn't bad
i also had a razr and it was a good phone: decent size, decent battery life, bluetooth. but it was next to worthless for text messaging and pretty much anything other than making phone calls. i replaced it with the Q.
most people didn't like the Q because they are used to PDA's with stylus screens, or blackberries. the Q is windows mobile and a qwerty keyboard with an interface that acts like a mobile phone and not a PDA.
it's unfortunate that they are abandoning windows mobile, but i am intrigued by the prospect of a moto android.
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Any Other US-Based?
Apple’s IPhone suffers from this, too, I think.
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