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Content Tagged with motorola + iphone
Camera Lights (No) Action… Moto
Update: Moto’s superbrilliant answer to the RAZR? Uh, another RAZR . . . RAZR 2. Jesus. Wonder how long were they working on that followup — a lot longer than the 5 seconds we spent when we jokingly referred to a RAZR 2.0 in the morning post. Though, it does have some nice features. The “media monster” is also the Z8. Exhale sigh of disappointment.
From earlier: Motorola’s CEO Ed Zander is set to show off new cell phones on Tuesday, likely including the “media monster” that he briefly mentioned last week. Do they need an iPhone killer, a RAZR 2.0, or just a compelling mobile device? We’d pencil in ‘D’ for all of the above.
One of the devices will likely be a movie-playing — 30-frames per second — device with removable storage cards which can hold feature length films. Om and I met with Motorola CTO Padmasree Warrior last week and she said the company had been in Hollywood the week before striking deals with movie studios like Universal (more interview details from Om later on).
Placing a bet on feature-length films and long form mobile video content, seems like a pretty clear shot at Apple’s iPhone and iPod franchise, as well as Nokia’s recent emphasis on the high-end multi media converged mobile device. But how can a recently beleagured Moto top the iPhone buzz — even Roy is planning on getting one.
Even worse for Moto, Nokia said yesterday that its market share will rise in the second quarter, pushing its stock up, and widening the gap between the two. And by now everyone’s heard the Carl Icahn (failed for now) saga and Ed Zander’s struggles.
Barron’s even wonders if Nortel’s CEO (and former contender for Moto CEO) Mike Zafirovski would have been a better fit to fight this battle. Ouch. Listen to Zander himself at 10AM eastern for the company’s ‘big’ announcement.
Motorola to Announce iPhone Competitor
Motorola CEO Ed Zander has given notice that Motorola is set to announce a direct competitor to Apple’s iPhone.
Speaking at the Software 2007 conference, Zander gave the audience a brief overview of the phone. Due to be formally announced next Tuesday, he described it as a “media monster”.
The new phone will support 30 frames-a-second, full-motion video and will incorporate incorporate support for SD cards.
“We are working with another company to deliver movies on SD cards. You can start watching unbelievable quality movies,” Zander reportedly said.
Unlike the iPhone, the new Motorola device will initially be targeted at the European market: the phone will work on the 3G platform that despite having a broad global presence, still lacks coverage in the United States.
He was surprisingly upbeat though on Apples iPhone, saying that the iPhone will stimulate the overall market for feature-rich mobile devices, including Motorola’s. “I think it’s [the iPohne is] going to, in some cases, reinforce what we have been trying to do and are doing with the mobile internet. Applications such as multimedia and video and photos and music are going to be done on these devices”.
Previous TechCrunch coverage of Apple’s iPhone here.
in part via smh.com.au Coverage at CrunchGear here.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Why Apple shifted coders to iPhone
Anyone looking for proof of the strategic importance of iPhone to Apple doesn’t have to look beyond Apple’s press release page — the company is delaying the next version of its Operating System, code-named Leopard, by four months, and instead shifting resources to iPhone, now slated for late June 2007 release.
The press release issued by Apple points to a weak link in Steve Jobs’ grand design for global digital domination: not enough minions.
However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned.
The future of Apple is devices. Non-computing consumer electronic type devices are much less powerful than traditional computers, and need programmers who are thrifty in their code and skillful enough to squeeze the very last pico-hertz of performance out of lower-power embedded processors.
It is even more important in the mobile phone world, where poorly written code could simply negate the best efforts of hardware engineers. Apple doesn’t want to do that — it has a beautiful device, with an elegant user interface. However, lethargic applications and poor battery life could destroy user experience and chill the demand for even the hottest phone on the market. Apple historically has been home to coders who squeezed every drop out of those low-powered Motorola chips.
Typically, OS upgrades have provided a financial boost to the company’s profit margins, but this shuffle indicated that Apple is glad to forego those profits and instead opt for its next big cash cow - iPhone.
Now we can smirk, and point to the fact, Apple did drop Computer from its name after all.
PS: This delay should stop those Vista-delay jokes, because those who live in glass houses don’t throw stones.
Photo by Niall Kennedy via Flickr.