Can Motorola claw itself back into the smartphone game with the DEXT?
At the Nokia World event last week, one of the journalists in the UK delegation decided to find out how many visitors were actually Nokia users.
He asked everyone in the press office what phone they used, and was stopped in his tracks when one of them dug out a Motorola Razr. Yeah, you read right. A freakin' Motorola Razr.
His astonishment speaks volumes about the speed at which things change in mobile. If he'd done the same survey at a trade show in 2006 - especially one in the US - the Razr would have been everywhere.
It's hard to think of many commercial slumps to match that of Moto for its speed and steepness. The RAZR was launched in 2004, and by mid-2006, sales had exceeded 50 million. That's nearly double what Apple managed in the same time frame with iPhone. In 3Q 2006 Motorola sold 51m devices and had a 20.6 per cent market share - second by miles.
But, as we all know, Moto didn't innovate, price-squeezed the life out of its Razr cash cow and introduced all sorts of nonsensical Razr variants (Rizr, Rokr, Wnkr, Fckr - I made the last two up).
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The public responded with a yawn. Skip forward to Q2 2009, and Moto managed 16m sales to give it a 5.6 per cent market share. Genuinely, I haven't seen a Motorola model in a UK phone shop for well over a year.
Last night, the firm began what it hopes will be a miraculous fight back with its new Android-powered Dext phone. But what a different world the sleeping giant has awoken to.
The Razr was a sensation because of its form factor. Everyone wanted some of that skinny, slate grey, machine-tooled action. These days, as I outlined in last week's column (go back and check out your lovingly laminated version of it), there is no form factor other than the touchscreen. The Dext looks little different from the Tocca, Touch, Viewty, 5800 etc etc. Moto doesn't have its own OS or app store to differentiate it either.
All of which puts the spotlight firmly on the Motoblur service. According to Moto, this gathers Facebook, Twitter, email and more in one pain-free app on the phone desktop. It's a nice idea, if not entirely original (see Nimbuzz, Palm's Synergy etc). But if the integration is as good as Moto claims, then it could prove a magnet for some smartphone users. Enough to claw some share back to Moto, at least. Maybe.
So now it's down to the Moto marketers. They began well by not calling it the Motoblr.
