As a whole, CTIA today was a bit on the disappointing side. Sure there were a few exciting things debuted, most or all of which we’ve already told you about, of course. We were particularly disappointed with Motorola however, and not for the reason we expected to be. As we showed you in our post earlier today, Motorola brought some interesting devices to CTIA. The ROKR E8 for example is a sweet device that we were planning a new dedicated in-depth post on. The Z9 and V950 are nice handsets that we certainly would’ve explored a bit further as well. As we touched upon in the post linked above however, we were greeted with less than open arms at the Moto booth. No, we weren’t behind any gags and we certainly weren’t bothering anyone. We were simply there to cover the show.
Here’s where Moto’s got it all wrong: leaks are good. Big companies know this and they often embrace leaks rather than hold a chip on their collective shoulders. Hell, some even leak info themselves to generate buzz. Motorola seems to take the opposite stance with regards to leaks. What they seemingly fail to realize is that leaks are really the only press that Moto gets in the blogosphere that isn’t negative. We were greeted at the Moto booth by a smiling “booth girl” who chatted us up for a bit, and then it was all down hill. We couldn’t get a single rep to talk to us for more than a few seconds. Averted eyes, walk-aways… Do we have contagious leprosy?
There was some silver lining, though. Before we were asked to “go take some pictures of the outside of the booth” (say what?) while snapping a shot of the V950, a funny conversation was overheard:
Moto Rep: This [ROKR E8] is one of our newer phones that we’re really excited about
Random Attendee: “Yeah, I think I saw that thing last year on Boy Genius Report. Is that really new?”
That’s right Moto. You’re going to run into BGR readers everywhere you go, and with our numbers at an all time high, don’t count on us going anywhere anytime soon. Don’t embrace us either; keep thinking that blogosphere love doesn’t matter. That really seems to be working out pretty well for you. It should be mentioned by the way, that we were greeted at every other booth we visited with excitement and an eagerness to show us the latest and greatest that each company had to offer. Companies big and small know us well and love us for the attention that we bring them of course. And why wouldn’t they? Sure we might throw out a jab here and there but companies know that news is news, good and bad. We wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we didn’t report on Motorola’s plummeting stock prices or the fact that the Motorola mobile division had to be split off from the rest of Moto’s business to prevent a fire sale. So Motorola, you just keep on flopping around like the fish out of water that you’ve become; it’s obviously apparent that you don’t know what the heck is going on, not even internally. Here at BGR, we’ll continue to inform and entertain our millions of readers as best we can, and reserve our coverage for companies we think might still be around in a year or two…