Motorola today held a small event at Mobile World Congress. As expected, no devices were announced but a number of interesting details were still revealed. In attendance were Rick Osterloh, Motorola’s senior vice president for Product Marketing & moto-maker, Steve Horowitz, senior vice president for Software and Mark Randall, senior vice president for supply chain.
Osterloh confirmed that Motorola was working on a number of wearable devices (something hinted at as far back as last summer). He added that the first of these, a smartwatch, is slated to launch before the end of the year. Motorola is aiming to address “consumer issues like style and battery life” with this device but no specific details were provided as to how it might do this. Pricing of such a device is also a key concern for the company. Could we see Motorola release the Moto G of smartwatches this year?
Rick – We are working on a watch that will be available this year. We aim to address consumer issues like style & battery life #MotoMWC
— Motorola Mobility (@Motorola) February 25, 2014
It should be no big surprise but Motorola also confirmed that the next-generation Moto X should be out by the end of the summer. Before that, Motorola will bring MotoMaker to both Mexico and Europe. Sadly, Canada still does not appear to figure in MotoMaker’s future.
As for the looming Lenovo acquisition, Motorola sees this as an opportunity to grow their brand by using Lenovo’s scale. It will likely open new markets to the company as well. At the same time, Motorola will continue to focus on Android to avoid compromises that would arise from supporting more than one ecosystem.
With Lenovo rumoured to leverage Motorola’s product roadmap into 2015, the products hinted at today look to be a pretty strong indication of where Motorola is going in 2014.