Friday 31 May 2013

Motorola confirms Moto X smartphone, coming this summer

Google’s Motorola Mobility unit CEO Dennis Woodside today confirmed the existence of the rumoured Moto X smartphone at AllThingsD’s D11 conference. He also said that the smartphone will assembled in the United States, making it the first smartphone to achieve this feat.

Motorola will be using a facility outside Fort Worth, Texas, that was previously used to build Nokia phones, for assembling its smartphones.

Woodside also revealed that this Moto X smartphone will come with an OLED display and will be released in October, however the company later issued a press release contradicting Woodside and noting a summer release. So, it is very likely that we will see Moto X much before October.

Moto X is going to be the company flagship product for this year and will compete with the likes of Galaxy line-up and iPhone, said Woodside.

This is not all; Motorola is also developing a whole portfolio of smartphones, which would cater to different segments.

Ditching tablets and focus on Americas

Dennis Woodside told AllThingsD on the side-lines of the D11 conference that the company is pulling back on tablets and will be mainly focusing on phones.

“A lot of what we know isn’t as important in the tablet. For now we haven’t been focused on that. That may change,” Woodside said.

Woodside noted that Americas – both North and South – will be the key focus area for the company, suggesting that its upcoming smartphones might not be released in other regions, especially the countries where it has already shut the shop like India.

Check out the full interview of Motorola Mobility CEO Dennis Woodside along with Regina Dugan, the head of advanced research for Motorola below.

Here is the full press release that Motorola issued following Woodside’s D11 interview.

Moto X: The First Smartphone Assembled in the USA

There are more than 130 million smartphones in use in the USA today and not one of them was assembled here…until now.

Today at the AllThingsD conference Dennis Woodside revealed how we are reinventing Motorola through a portfolio of products starting with Moto X, a new flagship smartphone that will be designed, engineered and assembled in the USA. We’re not talking about just a handful of units either — available this summer, every Moto X sold in the USA will be assembled in Fort Worth, Texas, making it the first smartphone ever assembled domestically.

There were a few reasons why we decided to do this. There are several business advantages to having our Illinois and California-based designers and engineers much closer to our factory. For instance, we’ll be able to iterate on design much faster, create a leaner supply chain, respond much more quickly to purchasing trends and demands, and deliver devices to people here much more quickly. And as a part of Google we’re being encouraged to take big bets on things that make a difference.

We still have a network of global operations, and that won’t change. Our global manufacturing partner remains Flextronics and we’ll continue to assemble devices locally in China and Brazil. But Flextronics is busy looking for people for the new Fort Worth facility now. If you’re interested, we encourage you to check the available positions and apply.
This is an incredibly exciting time to be in the mobile device industry. Our role in inventing the mobile phone is well known. We’re happy to be shaping its future as well.

Image Credit: AllThingsD

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