NEW RAZRS UNVEILED
First products under Google ownership
Motorola Mobility presented its first product launch under new ownership, expanding its Razr brand with three new smartphones and giving new CEO, Dennis Woodside a chance to outline the company’s strategy as a part of Google.
At an event in New York on Wednesday, Motorola unveiled the smartphones that connect to Verizon Wireless’ fourth-generation high-speed network and build on the brand of its last big hit — the clamshell shaped Razr, which was wildly popular when it launched in 2004.
The $99 Droid Razr M is a cheaper, smaller phone than the Razr that Motorola Mobility launched last year. Two high-end models, the Razr HD and Razr Maxx HD, will be launched later this year.
Verizon Wireless is taking preorders for the Razr M, and it will be in stores next week.
The Razr Maxx HD and the Razr HD show off more storage space and sharper-resolution displays than in the past, said Rick Osterloh, leader of global product management at Motorola Mobility.
Osterloh said the Razr Maxx HD can handle on a single charge 21 hours of talk time, 27 hours of streaming music — equal to all of the Beatles and Rolling Stones songs combined, and up to 10 hours of video — an entire season of “30 Rock.”
Longer battery life is one of Motorola Mobility’s priorities. Woodside, who noted he has been CEO of Motorola Mobility for 90 days, said Motorola Mobility will concentrate on:
† High-speed networking through its 4G and LTE technologies.
† The Android operating system to power the Chrome browser, high definition resolution and other features.
† Power management through longer battery life.
The former veteran Google executive said Motorola Mobility had made 300 technical improvements in the past decade to 4G, which lets smartphone and mobile device users access data faster.
“Our data shows people using a 4G/LTE device use more than 10 times the data of an average 3G smartphone user,” he said. “The devices are simply more useful to the consumer.”
He also noted that Motorola’s heritage extends back to Neil Armstrong’s transmission of “one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind” on a Motorola transceiver, and he introduced Marty Cooper, who made the first private handheld mobile phone call on a DynaTAC phone in 1973.
“I’ve never been more excited about what’s ahead of us and what we’re doing for consumers,” Woodside said.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who introduced Woodside, praised former Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha for making such a huge bet on using the Android operating system early on. Google owns Android and backed its development.
Contributing: