What Motorola Could Learn from Apple and the iPhone
As Motorola ponders a sell-off of its mobile device unit, analysts chime in on what the company needs to do to regain marketshare.
The list of operating systems from Motorola includes Windows Mobile, a Motorola proprietary operating system, Symbian and Linux. On top of that, Motorola has become a partner in the group headed by Google Inc. that is planning to build phones atop the new Android platform.
With so many platforms, "no wonder they have so much trouble building a decent UI," Gold said. "Users could care less what the OS is. They want functionality and ease of use."
Jeffrey Kagan, an independent analyst in Atlanta, said Motorola "needs a comeback product" to rival the first Razr and even the StarTac phone from the 1990s.
So while Motorola's problems are "not directly related to the iPhone ... the cell phone business rewards companies who think ahead of the customer, and that is something Motorola just has not been able to do," Kagan added.
Analysts agreed it would be hard to find any easy fix for Motorola's mobile device unit, which brings them back to the possibility that the business could be spun off.
It's hard to image a cell phone market without Motorola, Kagan mused. "Now that would be a sad day," he said.
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