Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha introduced the Cliq, the company's first Android-powered smartphone Thursday. The phone has a new service that provides deep integration with various social networks.
During a keynote speech at the Mobilize 09 conference in San Francisco, Jha said his definition of a smartphone is a device with a large high-resolution display, access to the Internet anywhere via mobile data or Wi-Fi, rich messaging and media capabilities, and, most importantly, a multithreaded OS that's capable of multitasking. This made Android a natural choice for Motorola because it's a modern OS that was built from the ground up with Internet connectivity in mind, Jha said.
The Cliq has a 3.1-inch touch screen and a four-row QWERTY keyboard that slides out horizontally. One of the biggest draws of the device will likely be MotoBlur, which is an embedded service that integrates a user's contacts, photos, calendars, and other information from various sources like Facebook, Twitter, corporate e-mail accounts, and Gmail. The service is somewhat similar to what Palm is doing with webOS, but MotoBlur delivers all this information automatically on the home screen via widgets.
The data for MotoBlur will live on a Motorola server, so a user will still have access to it if they lose their device or switch to another smartphone with the service. Additionally, it has GPS integration to allow users to remotely wipe a phone if it's lost or stolen. With companies like HTC, Sony Ericsson, Acer, and Garmin-Asus expected to soon have Android devices of their own, Jha said MotoBlur will give it a competitive advantage.
Motorola's Android smartphone also has most of the features one expects from a high-end device including Wi-Fi, 3G, GPS, Bluetooth, and a 5-megapixel camera that can record video. Along with MotoBlur, the handset will come preloaded with Google Search by Voice, YouTube, Google Maps, Amazon's MP3 store, access to personal and corporate e-mail, and instant messaging capabilities.
The move comes as Motorola is in desperate need of a hit phone or two, as the company had a $4.2 billion net loss for 2008, primarily due to its handset division. Motorola has yet to find another hit handset like the Razr, and its high-end smartphones are routinely outsold by the likes of Apple's iPhone, Nokia's N Series, and Research In Motion's BlackBerry lineup. The company even planned to spin off the mobile devices unit into an independent company, although those plans have been put on hold because of the global economic conditions.
The company has reorganized its lineup to place a large bet on Android, and it has done a lot of reaching out to developers to create unique apps for its Android devices. Jha said the Cliq wasn't going to be a "make or break" device, but it is an important first step to show that the company is engaged with the technology in the right way.
The Cliq will be exclusive to T-Mobile in the United States, and it will be available in time for the holiday season at an unspecified price. The handset will also launch internationally in the fourth quarter as the Dext, and it will come to Orange, Telefonica, and America Movil.
For a related story, see Eric Zeman's blog post, "Motorola Announces Cliq Android Phone With MOTOBLUR."
