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Motorola May Ditch Android, Revive ARM Partnership
siliconbits writes "It looks as if Motorola Mobility could be mulling plans to build an alternative to Google's mobile platform. Several independent sources have confirmed that the mobile phone company is working on a web-based mobile operating system to, as one observer put it, have more control on its own destiny. There's another piece in that puzzle; Motorola Mobility could take even more ownership of its destiny by reviving its ARM license as it depends at the moment on TI and Nvidia to provide the SoCs that power its products; Motorola did produce ARM systems-on-chips in the past."
Is there a reason why Motorola can't have both? They aren't a small company, they could have Android & test the waters with their own stuff too. However from previous experience, I think they should stick with Android. I've purchased several Tracfones for my wife & kids over the past years, and Motorla's software was by far the worst compared to Kyocera, LG & Samsung.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
They way they keep locking down their phones, perhaps it's for the best.
Motorola will make this stab at a segment in which it has nowhere near the level of expertise required to compete, and it will fail miserably. Sell MOT.
...then forking its own version (whether it's Android or a do-over on top of Linux) is like me moaning about gas prices then buying a Hummer just to stick it to the Man.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Motorola did produce ARM systems-on-chips in the past
I thought that Freescale, the company formerly known as Motorola, made ARM SoCs (and still does, by the way). Zombie Motorola - the bit left after they sold off or spun out all of the interesting bits of the company - never did.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
There's a mobile handset platform, recently downgraded to redheaded step child status and soon to be locked in the basement by the largest cell phone manufacturer in the world. It's a very nice platform. It could use the boost a company like Motorola investing in it and joining up with Intel in supporting it.
MeeGo.
Unfortunately, I don't think Motorola has much interest in putting an actual open platform on their phones. Pity.
Yes, there are vendors working on their own OSes. BlackBerry has its QNX based OS. HP bought webOS when it acquired Palm. Samsung has Bada. Out of these, Bada has been around the longest and it isn't exactly a roaring success.. I don't think anyone ever has woken up in the morning and decided that they'd go and buy a Bada device because of the platform. QNX and webOS still have the opportunity to fail very hard indeed..
Still, you don't get anywhere in that business by not making an effort to try new approaches. And at the moment, Moto has pretty much bet the barn on Android which must sometimes be a bit worrying for them.
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to meet the need? no, they refuse to acknowledge early, or late. it's primarily (developmental) about need meeting. once we discover our true abilities, we'll realize that the kode has always been being compiled. it also appears that we've been given more than we need to solve our MANufacturd dilemmas. for each of of our innocents harmed in any way...
If this report is true, then something is surely wrong at Motorola. How can you ditch an OS that is licensed for free, and is 'open' to tweaking to your taste? This boggles my mind.
Let's look at the iOS for a second. If Motorola wishes to replicate even half of iOS' success, they must understand that iOS is selling on it's merits. I just do not get it. Geeks don't like the iOS because it's "closed." But the rest of the world doesn't care, because it [just] works and it's a very good price for what it is. And it runs their favourite apps. Simple as that.
The vast majority of those that buy Android phones have no idea who makes the OS, and they just do not care. Motorola released a 'half-baked' XOOM tablet which hanged many many times on me, and was unresponsive for a while, which reminds me of another operating system, also licensed and widely used. But those were the nineties. I hope Android will not need a decade to mature on the tablet...and Motorola should understand that it is the price, the apps, the support and the look and feel of the product that will sell it.
And ohh, I had forgotten the hype (with ads) built around that product as well. Showing machine like creatures zooming across the screen with graphics that irritate the eyes is not way to advertise a product. Be simple and actually show us how the product can simplify one's life. That's what Apple does and it works.
But releasing a half baked ugly product will not and does not cut it. Someone should be fired at Motorola.
Yet another Web based operating system? Isn't that was WebOS was supposed to be before it flopped and started allowign native apps? And take a look at the top mobile OSes now, iOS has its roots in NeXT and BSD, which in turn has roots in UNIX philosophy which are really old. Android is based on Linux, which is 20 years old and has it's roots in UNIX which is even older. Windows Phone 7 has it's roots in Windows CE which in turn has it's roots in DOS and Win NT which are really old. Even QNX that Blackberry is moving to has a long history and roots in UNIX and WebOS is based on Linux.
The point here is that although people think it's easy to build OSes, building one that's full featured and modern is extremely hard and can't be done by just throwing money at people . It takes years for bugs to be found and shaken off. See how Nokia failed inspite of employing tens of thousands of people to work on Symbian and Meego/Maemo. If Motorola is looking to build something from scratch, I am not optimistic.
On top of that, hardware companies and OEMs seem to universally suck at making software and they don't stop trying. Motorola's skins on Android all lag even on dual cores, OEM software on PC is the worst junk imaginable with crashes, bloat and what not, printer and webcam software is just pathetic. It's like they don't even have a indepented QA team. HTC's Sense UI is appreciated by some, but my experience is that it's laggy and bloated, heavy on features but low on performance. I think part of it is that the OEMs treat software development just like hardware which is a major mistake to make. Software is extremely hard to get right, especially when building OSes, developer APIs etc. which require a LOT of coordination among extremely large number of teams. The competition is no longer about devices or OSes but about platforms, which are extremely hard to build.
I am sure Motorola doesn't just want to be another Android OEM, but it sure needs to get its act exactly right. Expect multiyear delays and cost overruns. Maybe they can team up with HP on WebOS or Blackberry with QNX.
This space for rent.
Maybe they're paranoid of the lawsuit FUD currently hanging over Android.
Motorola can never ditch the Android but somehow it always will be on the top because of its . thanks for such a nice and wonderful post.
As a result of this, Moto's presence outside the US is very weak. Probably the most significant partnership they have is with Verizon Wireless, and the new CDMA iPhone is surely going to be hurting sales. Carriers and distributors outside of the US are non enthusiastic when they're already carrying HTC and Samsung Android phones.
IMO, Moto's Android phones (and I use one everyday) are just as good as the competition. But unfortunately, they're not really BETTER than the competition..
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Motorola execs have made careers based on bad decisions. There is a reason why Motorola is as small as it is these days...
They can't be delusional enough to think that people want to develop for yet another platform. If it wasn't for Android there wouldn't have been a Droid and without the Droid Motorola would be tits up or have been sold to the highest bidder over a year ago.
I say this is great news. I would never (ever) buy a Motorola android device anyway. They don't get it. If the device is all locked down so you can't swap the firmware, then it isn't an android device in the most meaningful sense (openness). That's not to say that android doesn't have openness problems. You can make an argument about that if you desire. I don't really care. But what I do care about is this locked down DRM code signing BS. If I can't run what I want on the device, you can fucking keep it.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
The Android enthusiast community has largely ditched Motorola because of their decision to use encrypted bootloaders -- makes sense that they'd return the favor, I guess.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
or it just sure looks that way. when first we practice to deceive (damage, impede etc..)
I did some contract work at Motorola on the so called LinuxJava phone. It was a steaming pile of shit, 2 or 3 years late and not worth the wait.
The way they subbed out parts of the OS sucked as well. Vietnam got this part that had to talk to this other part made in Russia which the people in the US had to
integrate. There was roughly a 1 second delay between the press of a key and the reaction to the keypress.
Stay away. Far away.
AFAIK, google's careful to keep the GPL away from any code above the kernel.
There has to be more to the story.
There is no rational business reason for Motorola to go up against Android especially after seeing how Nokia failed. It just doesn't smell right.
The Android train has already left the station and Motorola wants to try and play catch-up with a smartphone OS? One of the most appealing aspect of the Android platform is its very openness. Why would I leave Android for a closed platform when it was such a breath of fresh air to tell Apple and its iPhone to pound sand? Think of Palm's attempt at an Android alternative and the Windows 7 Phone OS is a joke. I should think, Motorola's vast resources would be better spent not trying to re-invent the wheel but to continue to improve it.
The way they subbed out parts of the OS sucked as well. Vietnam got this part that had to talk to this other part made in Russia which the people in the US had to integrate.
Don't worry, I'm sure some MBA got a phat bonus for saving money on software development by outsourcing.
Who owns the ARM license right now? Motorola Mobility or Motorola solutions
7-8-9-10-0
Can someone explain to me why in the mobile phone market, everything all participating companies do revolves around control, control and absolute control?
Control may be a means to an end, that is profit, but it's neither the only nor a guaranteed successful one. So why does everyone focus on control?
Is it just the mindset of the entire industry that is perspiring through every product and service or does it have true profitable goals? Is it possible that everyone is thinking Apple's succeeded only because of their iron grip - and now tries to copy it verbatim?
After all, usual company goals are revolving around short term cash flow, mid term profit and long term growth. Control for control's sake brings neither. Apple did succeed because of better-than-excellent hardware, highly polished OS, coupled with insanely high marketing efforts, high brand recognition. They could repeat their first mover advantage in the face of crappy competitive music players against a world of crappy smartphone OS competition. They had good interface design and a clear "just-has-to-work-everytime-for-the-average-joe" development goal. All that success components AND their closed hardware with the associated closed, quality-assured, firstborn-stealing store.
And yet, whenever some lame company tries to copy Apple's success, they only choose to close down their otherwise less-than-excellent hardware, lock down their polished turd of an OS, try only half-hearted marketing efforts failing to secure any brand recognition, as they are simply a decade too late after first mover Apple. Not to mention that all other's interface design is unintuitive and laggy even in the default state.
Android was the only exception to that and they needed the largest software company to back it up.
In the face of excellent competition with a firstborn-stealing app store, everyone else will fail. Only Android could hope to outrank iOS in terms of OS quality and app store variety, but the resulting handset has to be extremely well-built for their combination to succeed.
It is extremely hard to outrank iPhones and iPods on any measure of quality. Next-to-impossible-hard. The only downsides Apple has are price and freedom.
Producing a similarly locked-down handset for the only OS that could compete with Apple is already a risky bet, since if people need to have their soul stolen by an app store, they will choose the one that is most worth it. Android wins by openness, never by features nor UI polish. It can't. With all those billions pouring in from the app store, Apple can outrun everyone else on quality.
Home-growing a competitive OS into a ten-year matured market of mobile OS development cannot be done while keeping the final price of the product below Apple's. Even with half the features left out, it's impossible to beat their economy of scale.
Producing a locked-down handset with a home-grown OS that cannot compete on quality or features with neither Android nor Apple is a suicide pact. Sell Motorola shares, because someone up their chain of command has gone batshit crazy with their stockholder's money.
I think I saw it on reddit, but someone suggested that an in-house Web OS would be more likely targeted at the webtop docks introduced with the Atrix. Motorola did say they want that functionality added to all their smartphones. That seems to make a lot more sense than Motorola ditching Android on their phones. I think it would have been an obvious development effort for Google to have had this kind of docking functionality be a core feature of ChromeOS from the beginning.
Didn't they make the Objective-J JavaScript framework Cappuccino that was inspired by Apple's Cocoa framework?
I don't think Motorola should or will abandon android at this point, but given the constant legal trouble that android is having a backup is a smart move. What would moto do if all their eggs were in the Android basket and Android were to get shut down?
This has been a fundamental problem with Motorola for years now. The inability to learn from past mistakes. If they are smart, they will stick with Google and run with the program. If history repeats itself, they will not be smart and will fail yet again.
Motorola was notorious for having the worst user interfaces ever for their phones even while having some of the nicest hardware. They are hardware company and a good one. They suck at software. It's obvious they should stick with what they do best. At the very least this should have been a skunk works project. If it's a hedge against the legal brouhaha surrounding Android they are just making things worse by confusing the market rather than re-assuring folks they have a back-up plan. It makes them look confused rather than prepared. This seems to be a perennial thing with Motorola. Once they start having some success they start to drink the kool-aid and promptly fall flat on their face.
Within a year or two, the middleman (motorola, HTC, LG) will be cut out.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
There was roughly a 1 second delay between the press of a key and the reaction to the keypress.
That's quite an improvement over iOS 4.x on an iPhone 3G. (kinda wish I was kidding)
There has to be more to the story.
There is no rational business reason for Motorola to go up against Android especially after seeing how Nokia failed. It just doesn't smell right.
I used to work there for 5 years. Decisions done in Moto are never necessarily based on rational business reasons. It is not cliche, and you don't have to take my word for it. But I shit you not. This is the company whose execs didn't get the idea of a phone with an integrated camera on it (and thus boxed their prototypes in dusty closets.) The amount of stupid shit that goes their upper management halls is beyond belief (not to mentioned the entrenched mafias of sub-par engineers and contracting firms that suck the living life out of it... lots of them are gone due to the layoffs, good riddance.) .
Moto execs, the company, they never lead, they only react to competitors (and react badly.) That's why Moto Mobility/Mobile Devices is a sad zombie shell of its former self. Their two-way radio division is doing well and seem to have their heads out of their asses, but the other half, you can count on it that it will pursue something this stupid. A last spasm before Darwin laws take their course.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahh *gasp* hahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahah *gasp**gasp* hahahahhahahahahahahahahahaha oh man! Hahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahhahahah oh oh oh my sides hurt oh!
Motorola couldn't develop decent software if it was written for them! They would take that well written and thought out software and proceed to deform it until it was some sort or franken-monster freak show. Just look what they did to Android with their ground breaking (as in please bury it in a grave) Moto-Blur if you need proof.
It would benefit both them and HP as well as the user base.
Don't you think?
Oh Motorola, you are the Sony of the mobile world. You want so bad to be the coolest kid on the block but you come off as just another kid who tries too hard and fails miserably with your wacky ideas that never quite pan out.
Motorola and Sony should partner up and then we can look forward to two companies putting out all sorts of crappy proprietary junk that never takes off and lots of privacy invasion and a ton of sad attempts to lock down their crappy IP so that even the people that are so misguided as to buy or advocate for their products end up hating them. It would sure solve a lot of problems for consumers... then they'd only have to avoid one company instead of two.
Motorola and Sony... Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee (or is it's Tweedle Dumber?) of the Tech World.
I doubt it. They are still struggling to get Motoblur finished, I seriously doubt they'd be able to field a consumer grade OS if they can't even get Motoblur out the door. Application and OS layer is not their strong point as a company, they would be better off of they just focused on hardware, Mark
If I was CEO of a Smartphone company, I'd release two two versions of every phone. One that was locked down with signed OS and Firmware, and one that is open. One for the average guy to keep his phone safe and secure and fully ... in control. The other open and uncontrolled. Just to shut the geeks up.
I have a Droid X, a locked phone. I'm a geek. People I know with unlocked phones have significantly more problems than I do. I don't think this is a coincidence. Some People, like me, just want a phone that isn't a hassle. If you want to play with a phone, buy a Nexus (they still have them), and quit bitching about how phones are locked. As long as there is ONE phone on the market that is unlocked, you have no right to complain that the locked phone you bought is .. locked.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I must be old. I want a phone. Not something that has my life inside it's entrails. I hate that the current phone has the ability to track my movements and remember who I called or called me. As all smart phones are this and more, I don't own one.
But I wouldn't really mind a phone that had a web browser, so long as it had no memory of my browsing. Call me paranoid in an age of good government :) Not looking for cute apps. Definitely not looking for access to twitter and facebook.
A market not served by any phone is the one I just describe. A Smart phone with Alzheimer's disease. No 'app' (browser wrapping noise), games, music player (so I can't ignore people around me) and endless chatter from mindless people I have no idea who are.
Perhaps this is the market Moto would like to serve; an Appliance phone market. The appliance phone is cheaper to make, sell and maintain. Cheaper because the OS, once written for a single architecture can be in hardware, not in an java virtual machine. It needs less memory and slower processor to get the same work done. The reduced feature set means it draws less power for extend life or cheaper battery. You could still use Linux, or any small multitasking OS would do. And the phone is completely locked down, a selling point for phone companies.
Selling is easy too. In a crowd of twitters, twitting along, you see the man or woman getting work done. The doctor or policeman doing vital work, not discussing their not so personal life on facebook. 'Looking for a lifestyle or just a phone?' motto for moto.
Maintenance is nothing more then now. A firmware update via the phone. No apps to maintain at all. No store to setup and try to scam people. Just sell a phone!
Yes, I know those who shower, toilet, eat, drive, run, work, drive some more, have sex and sleep with their Android or iPhone, find the idea of an appliance phone abhorrent, but may wont. That crowd, who I'm happy to be in, finds smart phone aficionados self absorbed and wandering out of reality (that's the place your about to trip in).
So, go moto. I might finally upgrade my old razr.
...and yet another platform for App developers to target. It won't work.
From a marketing perspective it's suicide. Everyone wants iOS or Android nowadays, because it's sexy, it's all the rage, and because of the huge number of Apps you can get from their stores. And with Microsoft entering the arena, I very much doubt there is space for anyone else.
I predict a painful death like for Symbian, only quick instead of slow.
42.
...is like giving a chimpanzee a pistol. The reason Android had to come into being is that telcos and hardware mfrs like Motorola are *completely* *fucking* *incompetent* when it comes to operating systems and user interfaces. Though in a way this move makes sense for Motorola's corporate culture. Like AT&T, Sony, and Comcast, they hate to do anything that is good for customers.
Now the vast majority of the developers and execs are all looking for work or working at RIM in Ft Lsuderdale. :/
Motorola spun off the semiconductor business over 10 years ago, remember? MotoMo has no fab, no server banks running layout software, no mask making facilities. MIT and UVermont have them lapped ten times before anybody at MotoMo could even think, "gee, could we make our own chips?"
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Motorola was floundering; badly. Then came the Droid and the Droid X and now Moto is right back there at the top and their answer to this success is to leave the very highway that got them there and take a hard left in an entirely different direction?
Typical Moto. These guys can't get out of their own way and are going to deserve everything they get with this ludicrous decision should they go forward with it.
Other Android equipment OEMs have expressed similar praise. Some of the aspects of a mobile OS that Moto wants from an alternative (control, lock-in) are not consumer-positive, which is why they're unlikely to become dominant in the marketplace any time soon. But having an available contingency plan, or providing a choice, is usually not a bad thing.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I have a Droid X, a locked phone. I'm a geek. People I know with unlocked phones have significantly more problems than I do. I don't think this is a coincidence. Some People, like me, just want a phone that isn't a hassle. If you want to play with a phone, buy a Nexus (they still have them), and quit bitching about how phones are locked. As long as there is ONE phone on the market that is unlocked, you have no right to complain that the locked phone you bought is .. locked.
So. You're on Verizon but fail to acknowledge that Verizon has jack shit in the ways of unlocked phones--you mention the Nexus, but there has yet to be a Nexus available on Verizon as well, unfortunately. The Thunderbolt has been hacked and can be rooted, sure (in fact, I just got mine to replace my OG Droid, despite the fact that I'm missing some of the ROMs I always ran on my Droid more than I'm enjoying the new features of this phone). But HTC is digging down Motorola's path more and more now. The Thunderbolt is their most locked down device yet, and the Incredible S is even more locked down. Except for the Nexus phones and HTC, the others don't exactly have the greatest amounts of ROMs available (esp. coming from the OG Droid and having reasonable expectations for the Thunderbolt as HTC phones so far seem to do pretty well there) and are variably locked down themselves. Only Sony seems to hold a shred of promise for their future phones, but... what worthwhile smartphones have you seen from Sony on Verizon any time recently?
I personally don't buy a phone unless I know that I can get around to rooting it and putting on my own ROMs (with a heavy preference towards AOSP ROMs, personally), but I also don't find it worthwhile to switch carriers any time soon. With the current trend, unless Verizon suddenly starts getting the Nexus phones, there's not going to be much in my market view for unlocked phones. So, yes. I'm going to bitch about that. I'm also going to hold on to my unlocked (even if I had to hack it to unlock it) phone as long as I can before another decent upgrade comes along that I will be able to have unlocked, of course.
A small hint for you.
The USA != the world. Outside of the USA iPhone is available on multiple networks, and yet Android still beats it.
I hear that "cost advantage" argument a lot, but I really don't think there's much validity to it.
Ifixit breakdowns show the iPad material costs aren't that high. I'm sure Apple gets good supplier deals, but that's just adding to their profits; they've got plenty of room to lower the price if they want to.
Competing tablet manufacturers are pricing their tablets the same or higher because their product has the same or better hardware and they want to make a good profit themselves; the market is too new to commodify it yet. They've got room to undercut the iPad if they had to.
The proof is the NookColor - an Android tablet that is virtually equal to the original iPad in specs (though a smaller screen), yet because it's aimed at a different, cheaper market (eReaders), it was sold at half the iPad's price, as low as $200.
After all, if Apple is getting such good deals on parts why isn't the iPhone undercutting its competition too?
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
I honestly think the corporate executives at Motorola just envy Apple's profit margins, and figure they can be just as successful by aping what Apple does.
They already spend extra money locking down their hardware to keep customers from using it in ways that Motorola doesn't approve of. The next step is to develop their own special locked-down use-prevention OS like Apple's to go with it. Once they do that, they'll automatically be as rich and successful as Apple corporation, right?
Or so I imagine their thought-processes go.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Geeksphone, in Madrid, are releasing a new 'Zero' phone in 2 days time, with a higher end 'Two' in the pipeline.
Crowd-sourcing via CyanogenMod seems to be their preferred method of development.
Being a small company overseas, it probably won't be available on contract anywhere but I'd certainly consider buying a 'Two' outright for my next device - might be a good Meego target, even.
Well, you see, there in lies the rub.
I'm on Verizon simply because both AT&T and SPRINT suck coverage in my city. I've never dropped a call. And for all the things that a Rooted Phone may provide, it wouldn't matter a single bit if I can't make a reliable phone call from where I need to. Dropped calls are not an option, and #1 on my priority. Everything else pales in comparison.
Give that, and when I bought my phone, I was torn between Galaxy and Droid, I chose Droid because of the Gorilla Glass, and I'm glad I did. People I know with the Samsungs their screens look like crap, and mine still looks good. What good is a phone, rooted or not, where the screen is crap?
Yes, having a phone like mine that I can update/root without VZ's permission would be great, but so would an AT&T Network that didn't suck, or being able to move from network to network without hassles, but VZ is on CDMA and sim cards don't work.
On my list of things that are a "deal breaker", Rooted phone is not on that list. Else I'd have one and be on GSM and not be able to use it half the time.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Some time ago, it was suggested that we should be using smart phones for troop comm links. I could see Motorola doing the smart thing and creating a SECURED OS, a SECURED chip set, and perhaps making heavy use of android for app development. This would likely be produced in America, or possibly just the western nations. This would allow them to compete quicky against Apple who would have say that not only do they not have a secured OS, but all of their system is made by China. IOW, Apple will not have ANY ability to have a secured phone.
With this approach, Motorola can use this as an inroad to bringing back production to the west, rather than being at the mercy of a CHI-COM.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Samsung / Motorola / HTC are beating each other senselessly, driving down prices to such a degree that they HAVE to sell millions of handsets to make any kind of decent profits. If I was an investor in this segment, would I want to buy stock in a company betting the farm on Android, knowing this? Doesn't matter if Android takes 75%+ market share, there just isn't much actual income to be found. It's just like Dell versus every other Wintel PC manufacturer. A low margin game, where you have to market yourself almost entirely on your hardware, but the consumer doesn't care much, and will jump to the latest and greatest and cheapest (brand loyalty is rare, as well, when you can't market something about your own software). Win7 will likely have similar issues, although since the license for that software isn't free, it may be to a lesser degree.