The device is the first homegrown smartphone from Motorola since Google acquired the business last year for $12.4 billion, as the Internet giant ramps up its hardware ambitions against Apple and others.
Google is struggling to prove the value of the purchase with new products and features to regain sales Motorola has lost in recent years. Motorola had a small fraction of the smartphone market during the first quarter, while Samsung and Apple had almost half, according to Gartner Inc.
“This is a product and hardware brand that is in danger of falling into irrelevance,” said Carl Howe, an analyst at the Yankee Group. “They have a new owner, so they get a shot. They get to say, ‘We’re the new Motorola, not the old one.’ It’s going to be watched closely.”
Fresh Start
“This is a relaunch of Motorola,” Dennis Woodside, chief executive officer of Motorola Mobility, said at the press event. “A year ago today, the Google team sat before a whiteboard and said, ‘What do we want to build? And how do we make it different?’ And this is it.”Other features of the Moto X include a curved back and 10-megapixel camera. Similar to the trio of Motorola Droids introduced by Verizon Wireless last week, the Moto X runs on a chip system known as X8. Motorola developed twin lower-powered chips to run alongside the Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) Snapdragon S4 Pro main processor.
The multichip system is designed to conserve battery life by letting the processor sleep while the lower-power chips work in the background -- sensing location, speed and message notifications, as well as listening for voice commands.
For example, even if the phone is locked, the user can say, “OK Google now,” to create and send a message, or open turn-by-turn navigation through Google Maps. And with two flips of the wrist, sensors will turn on the camera and be ready to shoot in 2 seconds, said Rick Osterloh, product chief for Motorola.
source bloomberg
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