This time last year Motorola were basking in the massive media frenzy caused by the surprise release of the Z8 phone, a handset which some people in Motorola didn’t even know existed! The phone was a great departure from the Moto of the previous 3 years; a new focus on an open, extendable OS and a user interface not dogged by being out of date in such a fast moving market. Motorola were showing the likes of Nokia and SonyEriccsson what they could achieve with a small team and a very low budget, especially compared with what the likes of Nokia throw at each new handset.

 

This year, we were expecting more of the same. The Z8 was never a one-off handset – instead it marked the beginning of a new and exciting range of UIQ handsets from Motorola, with four phones confirmed by the time the Z8 finally shipped in June last year. Those new phones, only one of which have so far been released, were hoped to resurrect Motorola’s failing market share in EMEA (Europe and Asia) and as an added bonus, might help UIQ and Symbian break further into the US phone market, where brand loyalty and network availability still outweigh phone features when users are choosing their next device.

 

By now, Motorola should have released and shipped the Z10 handset - dubbed by some as “what the Z8 should always have been”. This phone was originally slated for October 2007 (an un-realistic timetable) but should have been in the shops early in 2008. Next up is the rumoured and often leaked Skarven handset, believed to be called Z12 when released. This phone is the big jump which Motorola need to take in 2008 to stay competitive with the likes of Nokia and SonyEriccsson, who are rapidly eating away at Motorola market share at all levels of the industry. Following on from Skarven, we believe the next handset is known as Texel, a feature-reduced, thinned down version of Skarven. Far more of a design led handset, Texel is to Skarven what the N81 is to Nokia’s N95.

 

Both Skarven and Texel should be big sellers for Motorola, the only problem is that they need to be big sellers NOW. Motorola need to have these handsets in the shops within the next four months to ensure they steal a march on Nokia and SonyEriccsson, both of whom have far more technically advanced handsets coming out at around the same time. If Motorola doesn’t keep to this timetable and allows these handsets to slip to Q3 or Q4 this year, they’ll be in grave danger of their releases not mattering at all – the market place will have moved on by that point and we’ll all be buying a Nokia N96 or a SonyEriccsson G900. Motorola have a policy of not announcing handsets earlier than a certain time before their projected release date, however what Mototola are failing to recognise in this policy is that they are desperately in need of the media coverage a new handset announcement causes. As can be seen by what happened with the Z8’s announcement last year.

 

As some analysts and journalists have been heard to say, Nokia are currently leading the pack, with that not looking like it’s about to change; SonyEriccsson are about a year behind Nokia, with Samsung and LG biting at their ankles to leapfrog into that number two position; and Motorola – well, they’re at least another year behind SonyEriccsson. If Zander (CEO of Motorola) wants to get back some of that deficit and market share, he needs new handsets, delivered on time, with a decent feature set, and at a decent price. The current offerings just don’t hack it anymore, no matter how much we might like their designs.