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If reports I got today are true, then it appears to be pretty cut and dried that the Motorola we once knew is not only dead, but being buried and danced upon even as we speak. The proud producer of such past gems as the RAZR and the Q (which I still use and love) spun off the foundering handset division (as most of you know) last year to begin the current debacle.

Phone Scoop is reporting  that Motorola’s handset division is on the verge of laying off FIFTY PERCENT of their employees, according to “someone familiar with Motorola’s plans”. Cuts that deep would severely limit the companies ability to release a full line of new handsets in 2009 (not to mention any hope of innovations or surprises for 2010 and after) and would seem therefore like slow, lingering suicide…but wait there is more.

Phone Scoop is also reporting that Motorola is planning to pass on showing up at the CTIA Wireless show in April. Since this is the largest wireless trade show in the US, they are tacitly conceding that they have nothing new to offer the US market in 2009.

Driving a final nail, Phone Scoop then goes on to state that  this same source says that Motorola is only going to offer a dozen or so new handsets in 2009 (after firing half your workforce and therefore demoralizing the rest, little wonder). All twelve of these handsets will run Google’s Android platform according to the report, which also says that Motorola took an Android ONLY pledge last year, ditching Windows Mobile. I have yet to see confirmation anywhere of that last bit, and there is no comment from anyone as to what this means to the diverse Motorola prototypes for 2009 leaked recently. I admit I am dubious, since as recently as the end of October Sanjay Jha, Motorola’s co-chief executive, told employees that he WAS planning to jettison some of Motorola’s older operating systems to focus on the Android platform, but in addition to Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, according to Information Week (quoting the WSJ).

If all this is true (or even half true), it is a serious blow to WinMo’s marketplace prestige (for all our scorn there are STILL a lot of RAZRs sold in the US), but a mortal wound to what was left of Moto. Android was a qualified hit with the tech crowd, and has a fairly bright future, but I don’t see Android powering any consumer market worldbeaters in 2009. For a company like Motorola to put ALL their eggs in Android’s basket is asking for one messy omelet.

Zealot (444 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).