Lauren Goode

Recent Posts by Lauren Goode

Motorola’s First Moto X Ad Pitches Patriotism and “Personalized” Smartphones

What’s more American: Making your own hot dog or making your own smartphone?

moto_ad

This Fourth of July, Motorola is emphasizing the latter.

According to a report in Ad Age, the Google-owned handset maker is planning on running a full-page advertisement tomorrow promoting its upcoming Moto X smartphone. The ad will run in the New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal (AllThingsD’s sister site, under the parent company News Corp) and the Washington Post.

In the ad, Motorola says that consumers will be able to design their own smartphones — making them as “unique” as their personalities.

Motorola’s focus on “makers” isn’t entirely surprising. In recent months, the company has dispatched a “Make-with-Moto” truck to various college campuses to show how people can use 3-D printers and other tools to build their own casings around the smartphone’s components. (The truck made a stop at our D11 conference in May.)

Also noted in the ad is the company’s new commitment to domestic assembly: The tagline for the upcoming smartphone is “Designed by you. Assembled in the USA.”

At D11, Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside — who had the new smartphone tucked in his suit pocket, but wouldn’t show it to the crowd — said that, while parts of the phone would be made overseas, the phone would be built in the U.S.

The Moto X is just one of several new phones due from Motorola this fall. As AllThingsD’s Ina Fried reported, Woodside hinted at the presence of advanced sensors and Bluetooth technology in upcoming handsets, but final details and specs are still to be revealed.

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Nobody was excited about paying top dollar for a movie about WikiLeaks. A film about the origins of Pets.com would have done better.

— Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com comments on the dreadful opening weekend box office numbers for “The Fifth Estate.”