The last five years have been full of reinvention for Motorola; it’s gone from being kind of a
dinosaur, to launching the super-popular Droid line, to being swallowed up by Google, to making some of the best, easiest-to-use
smartphones out there. It’s been quite a roller-coaster.
Yesterday at
CES, I had a chance to sit down with Rick Osterloh, Senior
Vice President of Product at Motorola Mobility, and
he shed some light on Motorola’s relationship with Google and
Verizon, and gave us some hints at what we might see in the future.
GIZ:
You guys came from—just a few years ago—having tons of
products, really spread out. Now it seems like you’re doing one or
two devices a year plus Verizon Droid stuff. Tell me about how that
strategy shifted.
RO:
It’s been our view since we’ve been part of Google, that we wanted to
focus on a handful of really, really good products and nail those for
consumers. And so in the past the company would ship 40 or so
products a year, now we’re down to just a handful and we want to make
that handful truly exceptional. That’s our strategy.
GIZ:
How has the reception been?
RO:
It’s been great. 2013 was a huge year for us. A lot changed. We went
from being in what the market might think was a dormant state to a
total transformation where we launched two really successful
franchises, Moto X and Moto G. Those came out really in the last 5
months. You saw them and I know you wrote some good things about
these. And thank you. We were fortunate enough to win 32 sort of
“Best of” lists between the two devices. We are super proud
of that.
I
think the first step for us has always been to create really great
global franchises. And so we’ve done that with Moto X and Moto G.
We’ve seen great sales trajectory on both devices, very strong
growth, and a lot of positive consumer sentiment on them. So we’re
really happy with how it’s gone. Our brand is now in a position where
more people are becoming interested and aware of the brand, so a
couple interesting things there: Our brand awareness and our brand
consideration have grown about 30-percent since we introduced these
two products, and that’s a big, important change for us. So we’re
really happy. We’ve come a long way in just a few months, although
we’ve been working on it for a lot more than a few months. The
world’s seen it for a few months. And we’re really excited about what
this year has in store.
GIZ:
I think there’s a lot of confusion and speculation about how your
relationship with Google works. So, how does it work?
RO:
We’re clearly a part of Google, but we operate independently from the
Android team. And we’ve done that from the first day of the
acquisition and we’ll continue to do that. It’s just important for
the ecosystem. And that’ll persist. Our focus is trying to bring the
mobile internet to millions of people, and that’s what we’re all
about. We’re trying to give them great mobile technology that doesn’t
compromise, is high quality, gives them lots of choices, and is great
value for money. And that’s kind of our mission. The Android team, we
think, does great work. We’re the only OEM that’s solely focused on
Android, and so that helps a lot. When we have a focused portfolio
and a focus on Android, we can do a lot of interesting things that
other people might not be able to do with Android, but we don’t get
any special treatment from the Android team.
GIZ:
There were some features on the Moto X that I loved, and I expected
to see on the Nexus 5 and in KitKat, but I was surprised when they
weren’t there. There’s gotta be some give and take between you guys.
Constant communication, I assume?
RO:
Well we definitely communicate with the Android team, but only like
any other OEM does, in a very structured way. We certainly don’t get
things like advanced access to code, so that’s sort of the dividing
line for us. But we do communicate with them like any other OEM
would. So we’ll do things that are different, like our experiences
with Touchless Control and Active Display, and things like that.
Those are unique features that we’ve developed. We think they happen
to accentuate a lot of great things about Android and Google, but
they’re something that Motorola’s developed independently.
GIZ:
And the reason that Android won’t get those features, is it a
non-competitive thing? Or are you trying to have a wider array of
products?
RO:
There’s no orchestration there. So we see our market needs and we see
what consumers want and we try to go solve those problems. And the
Nexus team and the Android team, they probably do similar things,
although Nexus’s positioning has been about being a reference design
for a new vision of Android. We’re more focused on trying to get
phones to millions and millions of people, and we’re also really
focused on the things we’ve done with MotoX and Moto G, about
choices, high quality, great value for money.
GIZ:
In terms of the way you adapt the OS to your own phones, it’s
certainly a lot closer to stock Android than we see from most
manufactures. What’s the thinking behind that?
RO:
Well, there are several things. So first off we think Android’s
evolved to a great place, a great user experience. And we just
believe that it’s a better user experience to go to the core essence
of Android, and give that to the user. It also has some enormous
benefits, like what users have just seen, which is that we can
upgrade our phones to the latest version of Android much faster. And
that’s a core part of our strategy: We want to make sure that users
get fast upgrades. And so we were the first to offer a KitKat upgrade
on our phones through a carrier, and we did that through Verizon on
the MotoX, which was, we thought, pretty cool for our end users. And
we’re gonna keep doing that, keep pursuing that strategy.
It’s
also the case that you see our phones have sort of outsized
performance with the core specifications. User experience is really
fast, you get great battery life out of these, and that’s frankly
because we’re not introducing layers of software that we don’t think are necessary, like our competitors are. So that’s why we’re pursuing
this strategy. We add things where we think it can enhance the Google
experience, like Touchless Control & Active Display, and in other
places we try to stick to the core tenets of Android.
GIZ:
Do you think we’ll ever see Touchless Control and such make its way
over to stock Android?
RO:
I don’t know, that’s a good question for the Android team. It’s
certainly something we think is great for users, so we’re absolutely
focused on using that capability and making it better and better.
GIZ:
But there’s nothing that would preclude that from happening?
RO:
We certainly have some hardware technology that makes it possible and
better. And that’s one of the key attributes.
GIZ:
Like AMOLED?
RO:
Yeah, in the case of Active Display, the combination of the driver
work that we’ve done, and the display that we’ve picked have made it
possible to offer this kind of notification experience on the phone.
Also with Touchless Control, there’s specific hardware that’s always
waiting to hear this key phrase that’ll wake up your device, so then
you can ask it questions or make phone calls or navigate places.
GIZ:
That’s the X8 processor right?
RO:
Yep.
GIZ:
Our nerdier readers always ask why you went with that processor and
not the Snapdragon 800 which is faster, but also has low-power cores
and theoretically would be capable of the same thing.
RO:
A few things. We made a specific choice with the 8960 Pro as the core
SoC for the phone because we felt like it was more than enough power
for what we needed. And a lot of the operations the user sees in
terms of performance come through the GPU. And the 8960 pro has a
fantastic GPU. And then we have, frankly Motorola for years and years
has had a great team that knows how to do software and performance
optimizations, and we knew how to work with the 8960 Pro really well.
And with the additional cores we added—the DSPs that are doing
control for the sensors that are also listening for your voice, for
the keywords—those special cores made it so we could also enhance
the user experience and make it snappier. And we didn’t need to put
in a super high power and expensive chipset. So we could translate
that into value for the end user.
GIZ:
You managed to get KitKat out really quickly on Verizon. That’s
probably the number one complaint we hear from Android users: Updates
take forever. That’s why among the hardcore contingent the Nexus
program is so popular. How did you manage to cut through the red
tape, because I know a lot of that delay is on the carriers.
RO:
It took a lot of partnership, and Verizon was a great partner in
doing this. First off, because of our software strategy, we’re able
to do this quickly. Number two, we heard from users, they want fast
upgrades. We’ve heard that loud and clear, so it’s our aim to deliver
those. And three, this is a big focus for software for us, and we
pursued it and got it done first with Verizon but we also pursued it
with our other channel partners as well. So it’s now available on
AT&T, Sprint, and other places too. This is a key focus for us,
and I think you can expect this from us in the future.
GIZ:
It seems like you’ve made your version of the OS more modular. With
the Moto X, there were camera problems initially, and then a camera
update was released. Does that play into this strategy? So you don’t
have to give them a huge thing, you can give out in chunks what you
need to?
RO:
I’ll tell you, again this was a consumer focus point. We hear loud
and clear from consumers that a lot of them are disappointed that the
best day of their smartphone’s life is the first day they own it. And
we want your smartphone experience to get better over the course of
your ownership. And we think in the long run that’s gonna really work
for users. So what we did was behind the scenes, we did a lot of
groundwork to make many of our core experiences upgradable through
the PlayStore. And I think we’ve done 26 updates to those experiences
through the PlayStore since we introduced Moto X. And that’s
something we plan to continue. We think it’s a great trend for users
who want to keep adding value. We think of our software strategy as
being very agile, and we think that’s a new and unique twist to
mobile that we’re going to bring to our consumers.
GIZ:
Are you still working on one with the whole Droid line? You guys
started obviously, is that something you’re looking to continue?
RO:
Yes, definitely. We have our Moto products and our Droid product
line. They’re pretty distinct. The Droid product line is something
that’s had a great heritage, and it’s something we’ll continue with
Verizon.
GIZ:
We haven’t seen any tablets from you guys in awhile. Not since the
Xyboard, right?
RO:
Yeah, we did a few in the past, it just hasn’t been our focus yet.
We’re not disinterested in the category, we’re just not participating
yet, and maybe in the future that’ll change.
GIZ:
What do you think, are we gonna see a Motorola Nexus? You probably
get asked that constantly.
RO:
I dunno! We do get asked that a lot, but there’s no plans to
announce, and maybe it’ll happen and maybe it won’t. At the moment
we’re just focused on driving Moto X and Moto G. You know, with Moto
G, we just started shipping it at the end of the year, and it has
grown unbelievably well. It’s now available in Latin America and
Europe, where it’s done fantastically well in both places, and now
it’s coming to the U.S. You might have seen it was announced for $99
on some channels just now, so it’s a great value. As far as I’m
concerned it’s the best value for the money in mobile, and it’s the
kind of thing we wanna keep doing in the future.
GIZ:
When we gonna see some new stuff?
RO:
Stay tuned. Not here, but in the near future.
GIZ:
Thinking Q2?
RO:
We’ll be in touch.
GIZ:
Ha. Had to try. Anything you want to add?
RO:
Just that we’re excited to be back. We think we’ve made a big set of
changes in the past few months and we’re thrilled to see some of the
momentum that’s happening with our products. It’s a very, very
competitive industry, but we’re trying our best to change it for the
better for the end user.
