Motorola unveils three Android smartphones in China

IDG News Service - Motorola released two new Android smartphones for China on Monday, and announced details of another, as the company broadens its product offerings for the Chinese market.

Part of Motorola's MING series, the new phones have touchscreen displays and can recognize Chinese characters traced on them.

The MT810 and A1680 are now available in some areas in China, priced at 5,980 renminbi ($877) and 3,080 renminbi respectively, a company spokeswoman said.

The MT810 will be serviced by China Mobile, has a 3.2-inch screen and can display mobile TV broadcasts in China's CMMB format. The phone also uses China Mobile's OPhone 2.0 operating system, which is based on the Android 2.1 version.

The A1680 phone, built for China Unicom, runs Android version 1.6 and has a 3.1-inch display.

The third phone, the XT806, will be go on sale in September through China Telecom, priced at 6,180 renminbi. The phone will also run Android version 2.1. Motorola describes the phone as a multimedia notebook with voice recording, a camera, and business applications.

The trio of phones will take the number of Motorola Android phones in China to 11, all of which came out in less than a year. Motorola currently holds 13.6% of the Chinese smartphone market according to Beijing-based research firm Analysys International. This puts the company right behind Nokia and Samsung which hold 26.7% and 17.9% of the market respectively.

Motorola's MING series was launched in 2006, with early devices using a Linux operating system with the ability to recognize Chinese characters drawn with a stylus. More than five million Ming devices have been sold in China, and the handwriting recognition technology is now in its sixth generation.