Displaying items by tag: Motorola

There are two things you can do when you are at the bottom of the pile. One is to work harder and smarter so that you can fight your way to the top. The other is to talk smack hoping that the people above you will believe you are competent and you can BS your way up a few notches. There are complications with both of these but the latter has more dangers. Unfortunately it is this latter course that the folks over at Microsoft’s Windows Phone division are taking.

Andy Lees, President of Microsoft’s Windows Phone Division sat down for a quick talk with the people over at the Seattle Times and some of the things he said were interesting, but also a little laughable. He calls Apple’s one million unit selling iPhone 4S a missed opportunity and Android Chaotic. These are some bold words for a company that only captured less than 2% of the market in 2011 so far.

It is true that Apple might have missed an chance at putting out a better product, both hardware and software wise, but the market is speaking and it is saying that they do not care. Over one million iPhone 4S’ have been sold so far. That does not sound like consumer disappointment no matter how much you dislike Apple. As for Android’s chaotic development, well one of the things that people like about Android is that they can get the version they like. I personally like the SenseUI version of Android that HTC uses and prefer it over the stock version and the same can be said for many Android owners.

No, the comments sound more like someone grasping at straws and asking you to ignore the obvious. This leads us into the next comment Lees called the Mango UI a “flowing, almost singular experience” however others have called it the Jitterbug of touch screens. The tile layout is eye watering and almost obnoxious. The fact that Microsoft is forcing this on the Xbox 360 and Windows 8 is quite annoying. Having tinkered around with a Windows Phone recently I can tell you that there was nothing flowing or singular about the experience and after a week fighting Windows 8 and the MetroUI I could not imagine having to deal with that on a daily basis. I think that the developers at Microsoft do have a good concept and vision, but they are still falling short of what the Market wants. The tile based UI is not it, they like icons and widgets that they can drag around and manipulate. You would think that Microsoft would have learned this by now and maybe tried to find a way to make their UI more fluid because a bunch of square tiles is anything but fluid.

I think that all we are seeing is a PR push from Microsoft hoping that this gets pushed around enough to generate interest. So far, there really has not been any in Windows Phone, and the disappointment in the developer’s release of Windows 8 has probably caused some concern as the Metro UI with its large and ungainly tiles is the way Microsoft wants to go; now they are just hoping they can convince us that is what we want too…

Source Seattle Times

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Although the news of Google’s purchase of Motorola Mobility is days old we have to wonder about the slew of articles that have come out recently. We all know (whether we choose to admit it or not) that the purchase of Motorola was to bolster Google position in the market of the mobile OS. They, like others, have a lot to fear from Apple’s seemingly endless supply of accusations of copying, patent infringement and friendly venues. However, the deal is more than that in reality.

Motorola has an 82 year legacy of working with wireless (not the wireless we think of today but radios as well).  Because of this they not only have a nice stable of patents but also the technology and the innovation to survive in the cut throat world of mobile devices. The problem has been their “IBM” attitude in the past. Anyone that knows (or would like to Google) the IBM culture will know that the uniform was black slacks, white button down and tie. This is what you wore no matter where you worked. Motorola was the same way until very recently. That kind of rigidity in your culture does stifle innovation to a great degree. After all if you always wear the same thing, you can find yourself always thinking the same things. People that are locked down by their environment can become stagnant and, in extreme cases, ineffective.

So adding the fresh and open culture of Google to this can help out the struggling Motorola quite a bit; while the structure of Motorola may also help Google. It also gives Google something they want and need; a direct market for their OS. Google has been slowly closing the “Open Source” of Android with each successive release and we are looking at a completely closed source Kernel and OS in the very near future. Although Google invites other phone makers to use and customize Android’s UI they still want to have phones of their very own and with Motorola’s $86 Million dollar loss on top of their still popular “Droid” line of smart phones I am sure this looked like a ready-made situation for Google.

Motorola does get to keep operating as its own entity (for now) but you can rest assured that Google is also banking on those nice new Patents to keep Apple’s lawyers at bay.

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While working on my latest round of reviews (making a few calls etc.) I stumbled upon the one thing that could hurt the burgeoning slate market. It was not some great epiphany nor is this hard to spot. This biggest issue that slates will have is storage space. Looking around the market at the various offerings (especially the PC/Windows offerings) I found a disturbing trend. Most of the devices have very limited storage space. Even Asus’ vaunted EEE Slate which comes with a maximum of 64GB of storage. Out of all of the tablets/slates on the market today the one with the largest amount of storage appears to be the Gigabyte S1080 with a whopping 320GB 5400 RPM HDD.