There are three new members of the Droid family of Android-running smartphones, all of them carrying the long-established Motorola brand name Razr. The name was one of many bits of the Motorola legacy in sight today as CEO Dennis Woodside, introduced first by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, declared that today was the “first day of the new Motorola.”

In its newness, it seems to be looking to draw strength from the old Motorola. Example one: Martin Cooper, the inventor for Motorola of the original handheld cellular phone — the same guy who in 1973 became famous for a PR stunt in which he wirelessly called rivals at Bell Labs in front of reporters assembled outside the New York Hilton — sat in the front row. Example two: Jim Wicks, the legendary head of Motorola’s design shop and the man who led the team that designed the original Razr that sold more than 130 million units and became the best-selling clamshell phone in history was also on hand. So no matter how you slice it, the new Motorola looks a lot like the old Motorola.

AllThingsD’s Lauren Goode and I sat down with Woodside after Motorola’s announcements today at New York’s Gotham Hall to talk about how the news fit into his longer-term vision for the company. My first question was about his reaction to today’s other downtown mobile event.

AllThingsD: I spent the earlier part of the day at Nokia’s big Lumia launch event with Microsoft. Nokia says its big differentiating factor is going to be photography. What will be Motorola’s?

Well, I think you saw the story today. We think speed and the focus on it really does matter. And getting LTE right is really hard. We’ve been at it for a while. There are lots of things you do with a device to make it run in a power-efficient manner that are not trivial. The last generation of the Maxx we’ve shown that we know how to do that. Another point is the design element, and the screens in particular. The edge-to-edge screen is also hard to get right. If you do it wrong the glass can break. A lot of people don’t want to compromise on the screen size. But they don’t want to haul around a large device.

So technically how did you fit a larger battery into something that slim with an enhanced display?

That is a strength of Motorola’s. We’ve been doing this sort of thing for a long time. Jim Wicks, our senior vice president in charge of design, is here, and his team has been working getting as much as you can into as thin a device as possible. If you took these phones apart, there are hundreds of pieces that fit together like an incredible jigsaw puzzle. So it’s actually really hard, but something we do really well.

A lot of people were wondering if we might see a tablet from you today …

Not today, but we have some tablets in the market that have done reasonably well, but clearly we have aspirations to be a bigger player in that part of the market. I don’t have anything to say today, but stay tuned. It’s certainly an area we’ll be investing in.

If you could change something about, say, the Xoom tablet, what would it be? What would you focus on first?

A couple things. When the Xoom first came out, the state of Android was very different from what it is today. The content wasn’t the same. The function of Google Play. Going forward, the content story has to be very strong, and I think Google is focused on that. I think also price makes a huge different. One of the reasons we brought in Mark Randall from Amazon’s Lab126 is that price matters to consumers, especially in the tablet space.

Talk about the broader vision for Motorola now that it’s part of Google. What is it?

Motorola is going to be an innovator in Android hardware. And we’re starting with the devices that you see today. But these have been in the pipeline well before Google acquired the company. We were able to make some tweaks, but the teams are working on the next generation of devices.

What does Google bring to the table for you at Motorola?

First, a long-term mindset and a conviction. Look at past acquisitions. Google paid $1.6 billion for YouTube in 2005, and a lot of people thought that wasn’t a good acquisition. And we spent a lot of time helping that business scale and build the business relationships it needed to survive. And now it’s an integral part of so many things. All the presidential election speeches are on it. It forms a fundamental part of how people engage with video around the world. That makes it a huge value. What’s it worth? It’s hard to know. But the point is that Google took a long-term perspective with it. It’s about having a long-term plan and then driving against a long-term technical vision that benefits consumers. For Motorola it’s that long-term mindset, and the long-term bet on mobility. That’s hugely valuable.

Does that long-term strategy include set-top boxes?

It’s a completely different business. It’s called the home division and it reports to me, but that is a radically different business. The mobile device business is inherently a consumer business with carriers as our partners. The set-top box business has a very different set of partners and consumers don’t usually choose their set-top boxes in those markets. It’s a completely different business and we run it separately.

Are you going to keep it?

We haven’t talked about any of our plans long-term for that business.

Five years out, do you see Motorola as a broad-based handset maker or do you think people will look at it as Google’s hardware division?

You have to look at how consumers are going to behave in five years. Look back five years ago. The iPhone had just come out and a lot of people had feature phones or maybe a BlackBerry. Five years from now the form factors are going to change radically. And the consumer is going to be thinking about wearables and tablets. They’ll still make phone calls, but I don’t know if the phone is going to look like it does now. But the device, the hardware that allows you to communicate and get on the Web in a mobile way is something that Motorola really does well.

I’m sitting across from 4 diff people talking on Razr flip phones at LAX airport. Have I traveled back in time & someone forgot to tell me?

–Nick Bilton, via Twitter

Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha said his company plans to release fewer new models this year, in an effort to concentrate its marketing dollars.

“A lot of products that are roughly the same doesn’t drive the market to a new place,” Jha said on Tuesday in a roundtable meeting with reporters. Of course, it is an interesting statement from a company that released the Droid Bionic and Droid Razr in rapid succession, followed on Monday by the Droid Razr Maxx — a version of the Droid Razr with a bigger battery.

Jha noted that it was a delay in the Bionic that caused that product’s debut to be so close in timing to the Razr.

Asked whether he thinks Motorola would be better off if others also slowed their launches or if he prefers them to continue their current pace, Jha demurred.

“I made this decision independent of what the others will do,” he said. “We’re doing what we think is the right thing.”

Jha also said the company plans to pursue fewer new ideas in an effort to make more things stick.

The shift comes at a key time for Motorola, which is in the process of trying to sell itself to Google. The company also warned last week that fourth-quarter sales would come in below what most analysts had been expecting.

Last year the company introduced the notion of a lap dock in which phones could be plugged into a bigger screen and keyboard to perform many of the same tasks as a laptop.

Jha conceded that the product hasn’t been the commercial success it hoped nor did customers find it delivered the performance they were looking for.

However, Jha said that the company is making further refinements and still believes in the concept for the future.

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The company said the new Droid Razr will be the thinnest smartphone available at 7.1 millimeters, and has new features such as water resistance and a kevlar case. The phone will be available in November for $299. Motorola will begin preorders Oct. 27.

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To attract new customers, AT&T Mobility Chief Executive Ralph de la Vega said the forthcoming Motorola Atrix 4G will be the carrier’s leading device in its portfolio. Mr. de la Vega wouldn’t say how much money the carrier will spend on marketing the device, but he said it would receive amounts similar to campaigns for the iPhone or its previous hit phone the Motorola Razr.

On Thursday, the second largest U.S. wireless carrier by subscribers said it will start selling the Motorola Atrix 4G on March 6 for $199.99 with a two-year contract. Presales will begin Feb. 13.

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Their new tactic involves mobile ads that appear when a person using a competitor’s phone or network launches an application or browses the Web on their phone. The basic message: Oh, you could do better than that thing.

Nokia Corp. recently targeted ads for its Nokia Twist device at users of the Motorola Inc.’s Razr phone. Razr users who surf the Web would be dealt an ad saying, “Are you really still rockin’ a flip phone?” It then suggests upgrading to a Twist, says Gene Keenan, creative director of mobile at Isobar, a digital marketing agency owned by Aegis Group PLC that worked on the campaign on behalf of Nokia.

In industry jargon, the tactic is called “intercept campaigning.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

But Lurie’s strongest opinions were reserved for when it came time to talk about the company’s iPhone exclusivity, which is reportedly coming to an end in the new year. “Remember the Razr five years ago? We had an exclusive, and it was a $600 device. Everyone said that Cingular was dead and we were fine.

“We have 93 million customers and they all have different devices. We have come out publicly and said we aren’t concerned about it at all. The iPhone has been a great device for a long time, and we are in a position to compete with anyone who has any device at any time.”

Speaking at an investor conference on Wednesday, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha made his best case for the company and its opportunities in both smartphones and tablets. Motorola also plans to have 4G phones in the market early next year, Jha said, without giving specifics. But he also acknowledged the company is headed for some serious turbulence.

The first quarter is normally down from the prior quarter, but this year’s first quarter is shaping up to be a lot worse, with the cellphone unit expected to post a loss.

“We have an additional challenge potentially with Verizon,” Jha said, speaking in code so as not to use the iWord. “There is a competitive dynamic developing.”

Mobilized isn’t afraid to say the phone that must not be named. He’s talking about a Verizon iPhone.

Jha talked a lot about the company’s efforts to diversify–selling more phones to carriers other than Verizon, increasing sales in Latin America and China, and adding tablets. Jha said the company will sell both 7-inch and 10-inch tablets.

However, clearly not everyone was impressed. As noted by Barron’s, Nomura Securities launched coverage of Motorola stock on Thursday with a “reduce” rating, saying that a CDMA iPhone could ultimately push Motorola into the mid-tier of the smartphone battle, where it will face more competition from Asian makers, such as Samsung.

And the timing could hardly be worse for Motorola, which is spinning off the cellphone unit, a process that is slated to be completed on Jan. 4.

Longer-term, Motorola faces the challenge of using an operating system, Android, that is used widely in the industry, while spending more than rivals on research and other development costs.

One conference attendee suggested HTC’s research costs are a third of what Motorola spends. Jha said that there is a difference in the two companies’ cost structures, but rejected the idea that it was that pronounced.

“I think we are investing more in software differentiation,” he said. “I think we will make that investment matter.”

There’s also the fact that the phone businesss is so hit driven. That’s something the company learned on the positive side with the RAZR way back when, and on the negative side in the drought that followed the release of that slim flip phone.

Although the competition among Android devices is fierce, Jha said he doesn’t regret the company’s bet back in 2008 to focus so much of its resources on that operating system.

“There are obviously tradeoffs in every decision,” Jha said. “But on balance it’s been a very, very good decision for us.”

Jha said he knows that in order for Motorola to produce the kind of profit margins it wants long-term, it will have to be able to differentiate its software. Hardware differentiation, he said, gives only a six-month advantage versus doing something unique in software.

“I don’t think I can get to a gorilla position from where I am in one easy sweep, but I think it is possible to create differentiation in this business,” Jha said.

According to News.com, 100 people or so lined up outside Verizon’s midtown Manhattan store last night prior to its midnight opening. And various reports posted to Twitter suggest there were queues at other outlets as well, though quite a bit shorter (see below; click to enlarge).

In any event, the fact that there are lines at all must be a welcome sight for Verizon (VZ), which has been looking for a strong rival to Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, and for Motorola (MOT), which hopes Droid will revive its much-diminished post-Razr cellphone business. As one Verizon subscriber eager to trade up to Droid told me, “it’s the best smart phone not made by Apple.”

With endorsements like this, Motorola should be working a bit harder on branding the device as its own. Right now, the Droid marketing push from Verizon Wireless is so overwhelming that you’d think CEO Lowell McAdam designed it himself. Why aren’t we hearing from Motorola as well?

“Droid is potentially a game changer for Motorola,” iSuppli analyst Tina Teng said in a recent research note. “Motorola now is no longer just emphasizing slick form factors, such as it did with its RAZR handset. The company now has focused on the hottest segment of the global mobile handset market–providing compelling smartphone products that are usable and expandable through third-party applications.”

That being the case, Motorola might want to do a bit more to get its name out there.

“We expect Motorola’s 2010 performance to hinge largely on the success of Android models debuting in 4Q09. Just months ago, the expected launches were ‘Morrison’ for T?Mobile, ‘Sawgrass’ and ‘Heron’ for AT&T, and ‘Sholes’ and possibly ‘Calgary’ for Verizon” (VZ), Kuittinen said in a note to clients. “We believe the AT&T models have been canceled, and Verizon has pushed ‘Calgary’ into 2010.”

According to Kuttinen, “The loss of AT&T’s support for 4Q09 changes the winter outlook for Motorola dramatically. It is likely that the success of the $99 iPhone, combined with the possible November launch of the $99 Palm Eos could put AT&T in a situation where its $100 smartphone range for the Christmas quarter is already full of models featuring very advanced software and display technology.”

A worrisome turn of events and one that will weigh heavy on Motorola’s financials if it proves true. Said Kuittinen: “The narrowing of Motorola’s Android plans may have a substantial impact on the winter performance of the company’s handset division precisely because Motorola needs a rapid roll?out of a wide range of follow?up models for its ailing RAZR, Q and Z series models.”

“We expect Motorola’s 2010 performance to hinge largely on the success of Android models debuting in 4Q09. Just months ago, the expected launches were ‘Morrison’ for T?Mobile, ‘Sawgrass’ and ‘Heron’ for AT&T, and ‘Sholes’ and possibly ‘Calgary’ for Verizon” (VZ), Kuittinen said in a note to clients. “We believe the AT&T models have been canceled, and Verizon has pushed ‘Calgary’ into 2010.”

According to Kuttinen, “The loss of AT&T’s support for 4Q09 changes the winter outlook for Motorola dramatically. It is likely that the success of the $99 iPhone, combined with the possible November launch of the $99 Palm Eos could put AT&T in a situation where its $100 smartphone range for the Christmas quarter is already full of models featuring very advanced software and display technology.”

A worrisome turn of events and one that will weigh heavy on Motorola’s financials if it proves true. Said Kuittinen: “The narrowing of Motorola’s Android plans may have a substantial impact on the winter performance of the company’s handset division precisely because Motorola needs a rapid roll?out of a wide range of follow?up models for its ailing RAZR, Q and Z series models.”

Both devices are said to feature a touchscreen and slide-out keyboard and a “social communications” focus. Which sounds somewhat compelling, though it would probably be more so if the market weren’t already enamored with Palm’s (PALM) Pre, Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone 3GS and its $99 brethren, the iPhone 3G. That said, I suppose there’s always a chance that Motorola (MOT), using Android, could turn out a handset that apes those devices and returns the company to the glory days of the RAZR or at least points it in the right direction.

Certainly, Motorola desperately needs something like that. A weak product portfolio has already reduced its share of the handset market to 6.5 percent, about half what it held a year ago. And with the econalypse in full swing and consumer spending declining, Motorola’s prospects in the mobile handset don’t appear very promising.