Motorola ushered in its new generation of handsets, not a moment too soon, with CEO Ed Zander hoping to spruce up the range that has for too long been dependent upon the RAZR.
The emphasis is on making a new range called the MOTO phones bigger, faster and video ready, introducing the top of the range Z8 and the similar ROKR Z6 which are both slider handsets aimed to keep pace with the multimedia function of an iPhone.
Motorola made the point that multimedia devices which support email, music, video and gaming are growing at above 30% per annum, and up until now this was a sector which Nokia has been making its own and which the iPhone targets.
Zander described the Z8 handset as a media monster which will launch across Europe and Asia in June, supposedly ahead of the iPhone. It is HSDPA-enabled which it says means it can download songs at 3.6Mbps, and has an ultra-high resolution screen which can operate in both portrait and landscape.
One of the new features it is pushing is ‘See what I see’ which lets the person you are talking to see your view in full video, which we presume can be used for video conferencing too. The device comes with 2GB of on-board memory to hold the 1,000 songs that everyone said the first ROKR phone should have had that it co-designed with Apple and it has full HTML Web browsing and email access.
The memory can go right the way up to 32 GB using expandable flash microSD memory cards which it says is enough storage for 12 full-length movies or 70 hours of music and it has a USB 2.0 port.
Motorola is giving away a copy of the film, The Bourne Identity, in a 512MB microSD card, in much the same way that Sony gave away movies to demonstrate the effectiveness of its PlayStation Portable.
Other devices include the slightly slimmer RAZR2 in GSM, HSDPA and EVDO variants, a Q 9 PDA style device with a Qwerty keyboard, and the newest ROKR, the Z6, music phone, like a cut own Z8. All the ROKR phones use Windows Media formats for content.
Will this launch on its own revive the flagging fortunes or Motorola? Well the devices have had their Wow factor stolen by the imminent Apple iPhone, so we expect that although they will have some impact on preserving Motorola’s number two position in the handset market (behind Nokia, ahead of Samsung), Zander will have to find more moves to ensure a full recovery.