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Motorola Continues Abandoning Things

Posted by Zealot on October 9, 2009 – 1:47 am  Share

limo_foundation Microsoft shouldn’t feel so bad that Motorola dropped Windows Mobile in order to devote itself to Google’s Android OS, since they just did the same thing to LiMo. Motorola has decided to drop down to associate membership in the LiMo Foundation, the group that shepherds Mobile Linux which they founded alone with Samsung to promote the use of Mobile Linux.

Associate membership means they cannot hold posts in the Foundation and effectively makes Motorola an observer…on the board that they founded. What’s more, I saw a report that Motorola demanded that the LiMo Foundation stop listing Moto as a founder. Is Google that jealous a master? Technically Google with it’s Linux-based Android OS would be a natural to join the LiMo Foundation, but it has been noted often by Linux evangelists that it has refused to.

No word on if other LiMo board members who also make Android devices, such as fellow founder Samsung, will follow Moto’s lead.

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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!).


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  • Wasn't Motorola trying to abandon (in other words, sell off) their mobile phone division? I think they just wanted to get it profitable first, but that could be one more thing that they're trying to abandon. :D

    Steve
  • They tried like hell to sell it off a year and a half ago...no buyers.

    Likely once they get a "hit" phone or two they will try to sell again.
  • doog
    It's no secret that Motorola has struggled, and, when you struggle, you often do things like focus on the things that you do well and drop things that are not a critical part of your success. I'd not be too surprised that Motorola continues to shake things up to try to become more successful.

    The people who decided to co-found LiMo are all gone, right? Why should new management be required to carry on the strategies and tactics of the people that they replaced? What would continuing to be on the LiMo board bring to Motorola at this point? If they cannot answer this question, then the smart thing to do is leave, right?
  • It's no secret that Motorola has struggled, and, when you struggle, you often do things like focus on the things that you do well and drop things that are not a critical part of your success.

    Forget about LiMo for now. How well has Motorola done Android phones in the past? ;-)

    Steve
  • doog
    Again, Motorola's core competency is not LiMo, and it is not WM handsets. It's making handsets, period. It's obvious that making WM devices is doing nothing for them, so pick a platform that is growing in share, rather than contracting, take a risk that you made the right choice (and avoid paying a license fee for the OS as well) - I think it's a good play. It may not work, but making WM handsets wasn't working, either. And they can always go back when WM7 comes out in 2013.
  • Given how Motorola is doing, I'm not sure their core competency is handsets. :D However, they've been making Windows Mobile handsets since the early Smartphone days, so it's closer to a competency than Android handsets. They had lots of Windows Mobile engineers (if reports were correct) in house and, obviously, zero Android engineers until recently.

    If you want to portray it as a cost-cutting measure, that's fine. If you want to portray it as a new venture to hopefully get a new class of users (shaking things up, as you put it), fine. But don't try to spin it as trying to "focus on the things that you do well". If they were doing things that well, they wouldn't have needed to shake things up, right?

    As for WM 7 coming out in 2013, I assume that was a joke. Current reports have it going RTM in Spring 2010, and it won't take 3 years for OEMs to introduce phones with it. Unless there's slippage (from Microsoft? Never!), handsets should be available during Fall 2010.

    Steve
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