Handset manufacturer, Motorola looks set to make their first Android Smart Social phone. They have already appointed about 350 employees to do this. They have also placed ads in various publications to recruit software engineers for their Interactive Design Team.
Business Week reports that Motorola has invested $50 million in their Android Social Phone project, which will be managed by Motorola-owned mobile email company, Good Technology.
Motorola will require at least 6 months before they are ready to launch their new phone. They have not even announced a name for it as yet.
The phone is expected to have a touch screen like the iPhone, and a slide out QWERTY key board like the HTC T-Mobile G1. The look, though, is expected to be on the lines of the Motorola Krave, and it is likely to be cheaper than the G1 phone, at around $150.
The G1 phone is already capable of transferring contacts from ones Gmail account into the phone. It is likely that Motorola’s Android phone may take this one step further by tieing up with Facebook and or MySpace, to enable transferring contacts from these social networks into the phone’s address book. This would also enable users to check status updates and activity streams on the phone itself. Facebook has a similar facility with the iPhone, but they require a separate app for this, which may not be necessary on Motorola’s Android.
Whether people will be really keen on getting Facebook or MySpace on their phones or not will decide the future of the Android Social phone and indirectly that of Motorola too.
Though Motorola is the third largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world, their mobile phone division has made losses to the tune of $1.9 million in the last year and is desperately in need of another success story like the RAZR. They hope the Android phone might be just the thing they need.
