Motorola's Android plan lures Verizon, but where is Donut?
Published: 27 July, 2009
READ MORE: Motorola | Verizon | Android
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According to BusinessWeek, Motorola (like Nokia, tapping at the doors of its US heartland) is showing far greater willingness than in the past to build phones to operators' preferences and with their branding paramount. "We are impressed with the new urgency at Motorola," an executive at one of the major carriers told the magazine, which reports that co-CEO and mobile devices chief, Sanjay Jha, has been negotiating personally with Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam (and, of course, Jha's previous employer Qualcomm is one of Verizon's closest friends, so the groundwork is laid). Apparently Jha has made several concessions to ensure a major platform for his Android firstborn - allowing the cellco to use its brand on most of the software and keep as much as 30% of apps revenue. Cutting the carrier into apps deals at a higher rate than Apple and others is an Android policy as set out by Google for Android Market, but 30% indicates that Motorola will sacrifice its own cut of software money, given that developers expect at least 70%.
"Motorola says, 'I am going to take the generic part of Android and make it carrier-specific'," commented Bank of America analyst Tal Liani - the key Google strategy to make its platform attractive to operators, as already seen at China Mobile.
Motorola also launched new Android development resources through its MOTODEV program, including a new App Accelerator Program and MOTODEV Studio for Android Beta. Those signing up get early access to tools and test handsets among other benefits.
All this Android buzz threatens to steal the limelight away from the new kid on the smartphone block, Palm Pre, which fought back last week with an enterprise revamp. Palm released a webOS update for the Pre, with expanded support for Exchange Active Sync policies. Other, more consumer oriented, enhancements included better working with Facebook and Google contacts, and a reintroduction of iTunes synching, which Apple disabled with its last software update - threatening a confusing tit-for-tat between the two companies. The changes came just days after Palm made the webOS Mojo software development kit generally available, much sooner than previously thought.
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