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."

Comments

Either/Or

[XxtraLarGe]

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.

Re:Either/Or

[yog]

This is apparently the original article. If you google the headline, you find about 20 copies on various blogs. I don't understand why Slashdot submitters can't at least link to the original, unless they have a stake in the blog.

I'm with the Motorola-is-stupid crowd on this one. They are a hardware/telecom company, not a software company. They have no demonstrated track record of developing a competent, competitive smartphone OS. Short of buying Palm's WebOS, which maybe they should have done instead of letting HP have it, they don't have much hope of keeping up with the Android and iOS juggernauts. Even Rim, the erstwhile smartphone king, has a teeny little app market compared to the two others, and their market share is shrinking, not growing.

That said, I wish MOT well because a little competition is good for the consumer. I would prefer that they work on perfecting their tablets and smartphones in the Android space, however. The Xoom is a great first effort. Why not tweak it until it's flawless and best-of-breed? Why not help Google improve Android in the areas where MOT feels it's deficient? For a lot less money and resources than developing their own proprietary crappy OS, they can be very competitive.

Methinks Motorola is not thinking this through very clearly. Then again, it's just a rumor.

Re:Either/Or

[Andy Dodd]

But it's still the only platform that seems to be holding up well against iOS...

WP7 seems to have epicfailed from the get-go (crippled compared to its predecessor with the only thing to offer being a shiny UI, causing former Windows Mobile loyalists to jump ship - many of the hardcore WM owners have gone Android, and in some cases have taken to running Android on their Windows-Mobile targeted hardware.) On top of the above issues, WP7 has had some serious issues (excessive background data usage, numerous firmware updates causing bricking)

webOS - seems dead from the start to me

BlackBerry - Hanging in their due to their incredible momentum and entrenchment within the large business connectivity segment

Motorola has tried (and failed) numerous times to do their own thing. They're idiots if they think they can do it again.

Re:Either/Or

[AlienIntelligence]

Android has also been losing it's mojo, and is getting legal threats from everywhere.

If by everywhere, you mean, its competition... yeah... what else is new?
[ http://www.itworld.com/open-source/140916/android-sued-microsoft-not-linux ]
And Android, ie, Google isn't being sued, only companies that are involved
with it. Typical intimidation tactics.

Furthermore... if Google finds there to be any merit and since they aren't
being sued (yet), they simply can change whatever is the issue, or license
it... throw brain cells or money at it and it will go away. Android won't go
away... but the lawsuits eventually will.

Lastly... it's piddly things like this:
Patent # 5,778,372 (July 7, 1998): "Getting remote deployment and management of an electronic document with embedded images." Patent # 6,339,780 (January 15, 2002): "Status of loading in a hypermedia browser having a limited display area on screen."
Patent # 5,889,522 (March 30, 1999): "A system that provides controls to the derived windows."
Patent # 6,891,551 (May 10, 2005): "Management selection in editing electronic documents."

...that will get the snip of a few lines of code and problem is gone.

-AI

Re:Either/Or

[RazzleFrog]

I would say Android is doing more than "holding up well" against iOS. Isn't it beating it by a handy margin now - even with iPads? If Motorola was smart they back a winning horse. Android is only going to get stronger over time.

Re:Either/Or

[tomhudson]

And the linked article which is the source of the rumours makes some really dumb suppositions:

Drieu left Apple in March 2010, where he was the head of the company's rich media and applications group. After a five month period without employment, he joined Motorola. His work with Web standards groups WhatWG and W3C and his Web-related patents suggest that he would be well-suited to lead an operating system development effort.

Yeah,. right, that's the ticket. Get "web standards" people to build an operating system. That's got fail written all over it.

And the reason given?

Google is shooting itself in the foot," said the person familiar with Motorola's plans, citing what he sees as concerns about Android fragmentation, product differentiation, and issues related to Google's support for its partners.

So you fix that by ... making a competing platform that nobody's going to write apps for?

I'm not buying it. And neither will consumers, because there's no App for that.

Locking

[Nerdfest]

They way they keep locking down their phones, perhaps it's for the best.

They did?

[TheRaven64]

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.

There's a difference..

[Dynamoo]

There's a difference between ditching something and building an alternative. Motorola are a bit unusual in that they are almost 100% committed to Android on smartphones (there are some Enterprise devices that still run Windows 6.5 though). HTC, Samsung, LG and even Nokia have a multi-platform smartphone approach.

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.