Motorola's first Android phone on its way

IDG News Service - Motorola today announced its first Android smartphone, which will ship in the fourth quarter with T-Mobile USA under the name Cliq.

The touch-screen phone will use an upcoming Internet-based service for Motorola phones called MotoBlur, which will integrate information from users' contacts on a variety of social-networking services including Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. MotoBlur users will be able to combine their contacts on all those networks into one contact list, organize their own groups or divide contacts by social network, according to Sanjay Jha, co-CEO of Motorola and CEO of the company's Mobile Devices group.

The Cliq, unveiled at the Mobilize conference in San Francisco, will have a slideout QWERTY keyboard as well as a touch screen. It will come with Wi-Fi as well as 3G (third-generation) connectivity, a 5-megapixel camera that can shoot video at 24 frames per second and a standard 3.5mm headphone jack.

The Motorola Cliq smartphone will ship with the Android operating system. T-Mobile USA is the wireless carrier.

The device will be called the Dext in other markets. In the fourth quarter, it will also be introduced with Orange in France and the U.K., Telefónica in Spain and América Móvil in Latin America, Jha said. No pricing was revealed for any of the markets.

"It's a very important starting point for us," Jha said.

Within the next few days, Motorola will introduce another Android handset that will ship in time for the year-end holiday season, Jha said.

Next year the company will roll out many more devices worldwide, in different form factors, that can use the MotoBlur service, he said.

"I see smartphones as the future of consumer and prosumer computing," Jha said during a conversation on stage with Om Malik, founder of the GigaOm Network, which organized the conference. "If it doesn't fit in your pocket, I don't think it's going to be a relevant device from a consumer and prosumer point of view."

Like other handset makers, Motorola is struggling to compete with Apple's iconic iPhone. The stakes may be higher for Motorola because it hasn't had a big hit since its original Razr earlier this decade, at least a generation ago in the handset world. The Schaumburg, Ill., company shipped 14.8 million handsets in the second quarter, down from 28.1 million a year earlier. Though other manufacturers have been hit by the recession, Motorola has fallen back more dramatically. Its Mobile Devices division revenue fell 45% and it lost $253 million in the second quarter.

Early in 2008, Motorola said it might spin off the handset division, its weakest performing unit. But in October, the company said it would delay the spinoff and narrow down the list of software platforms it uses on phones, focusing on Android and Windows Mobile. Jha did not mention Windows Mobile during the event.