Motorola Apparently Not Satisfied With Android

I've been saying this for a while. And it's precisely the reason given by Nokia for choosing to partner with MS. Hardware is quickly becoming commoditized and the only way for OEM's to charge a premium and make decent margins is to differentiate on software. Now, I do agree that they may be too focused on UI overlays, but that's the way it is.

Most people won't and don't want to root their phone and flash a rom. The hardcore "vanilla" constituency here only validates the marketability of these overlays. No, no overlay is for everyone - try to be all things for all people and no one is satisfied.

If instead of Blur the Moto phones came loaded with Cyanogen Mod a lot of people here would be all over it (and a lot of people wouldn't care for it). People keep projecting their preferences on the market, but the market is not uniform (otherwise everyone would have an IPhone).

 

Just like they say, ignorance is bliss...how else could companies be run like Apple and flourish the way they do.

 

This surprises me not at all. Let's look at Moto's history. They blow the cellphone market wide open with the StarTac, make buttloads of money, absolutely dominate the market so that anyone who is anyone has a StarTac, and then sit on their laurels while everyone else passes them by until they are on the brink of bankruptcy.

Then they come out with the Razr and it's the StarTac all over again; they dominate the market, make buttloads of money, anyone who is anyone has a Razr, and Moto sits on their butts until they are, once again, on the brink of bankruptcy.

Then comes the Droid, which not only brings Moto back with StarTac III, unarguably makes Android a household name, Moto dominates both the Android market as well as smartphone market, and then they come out with the Droid X. Granted, the X has sold amazingly well and hardwarewise is still an amazing phone, Moto totally abandoned the vanilla Android philosophy that mad the Droid the success it was.

Why should we expect Moto to get a clue now? They're only following the only path they know. :icon_evil:

 

Honestly I doubt Moto will go completely away from Android.. at least not right away. However, I do believe they'll probably continually increase the size and effect of blur until you're no longer able to tell that you're running Android and blur essentially becomes the os. And I figure they'll do all of this while continuing with locked/encrypted boot loaders. It's things like this that caused me to go with the TB instead of waiting for the Bionic..

 

I read that today that Moto was keeping android as their phone OS, but have their OS for webtop.

 

Correct, it's still android but with the webtop layer, just like all the other makers with sense and whatnot.

 

Moto is garbage. I can't wait to move on from this droid 2

Sent from my DROID2 using Tapatalk

 

It's always possible they are going to try to kick off the real mobile revolution. Imagine a more functional webtop os with wireless display ability. I believe it'd be difficult to move away from android due to the momentum it has, but a fully fleshed out webtop os with hardware orders of magnitude more capable than what's currently on the market would certainly be an added value proposition to help moto stand out in a sea of similar devices.

 

Personally I think they are talking about changing android in the way Cyanogen does. I think they want to take android and do more than just add blur and a few blur apps, I think they want a new android experience of their own to differentiate them from other OEMs. If this is the case well who knows. Personally I prefer Cyanogen over any other android out there and OEMs could do the same thing to android if they choose to. They could completely customize it and make it their own as many of our devs do now. So if this is the case it will depend on how they implement it because seriously android has such huge potential to be so much more and moto has the capital to add all the missing pieces and make android a complete OS that would rival desktop os's. Add in a more robust webtop layer and wow they could really do some damage. Now that all said do I think they will make it something I like... Prolly not but who knows and if they take this route then look for their phones to be even more locked down then they are now and in all honesty I would understand their reasoning to do so. As is now I don't...

 

Moto is like a cat.

People worshiped cats a looooooong time ago, they (the cats) still haven't forgotten about it.

So it is with moto.

 

"Dwindling opportunities for hardware differentiation" = "Competitors like LG and Samsung are out-innovating us with their Android products".

While it's true that stellar profit margins are difficult to achieve in a commoditized Android environment, they're fooling themselves if they think they can create an OS + ecosystem that can compete with Android, iOS, PalmOS, WP7, and Blackberry.

If they can't differentiate their hardware to stand out, how are they planning to create a unique OS that excels at something their competitors can't?

 

It took me awhile to get to flashing roms on Android phones but I must say that a lot of people should be able to tell the difference between Sense UI and Blur.
To tell the truth to me Blur is Oright. Sense UI is way better and I believe that the average user should be able to tell the difference between the two.
I don't know but it almost seems like Sense UI has produced a lot of apps around that try to give you that sense UI feel. I mean I try to replicate sense UI in my Droid 2.
I for one think that the Droid 2 will be my last Moto phone for awhile. I just hope that HTC comes out with a more powerful phone with a keyboard.