You wouldn’t know it from coverage of this year’s MWC in Barcelona but Motorola actually is hiding in a booth at the show. No, really. Truth be told it’s a great-looking booth with a new layout, shiny new graphics and an attention-grabbing design. So what did Moto bring to show off in Barcelona? A diamond-crusted Aura, a whole bunch of Wi-Fi and LTE networking equipment and a handful of already-announced handsets. In other words, its mobile business is struggling, to say the least, and the one new handset Motorola launched at the biggest mobile show of the year is a $7,000+ phone, 50 of which will be manufactured and maybe 15 of which will actually be purchased. Strategy at its finest.
We know Motorola has some exciting new kit coming out in 2009. We scooped a whole bunch of sexy new handsets late last year – a couple of which we’re now hearing will pack Android. “Plan ahead.” The company’s mobile business is becoming less significant by the second so if you were in Moto’s shoes, wouldn’t you want to make a splash at MWC? Maybe you’d pull a Sony Ericcson and do what it did early in the Xperia X1’s life. Show it off but don’t let people touch it. Do something… Anything… Get people talking about Moto and perhaps even a tiny bit excited about an upcoming Motorola phone. But alas – unless you’ve got $7,000 and a penchant for gaudy gear or an engineering degree and a penchant for infrastructure, you can move right along. Nothing more to see here.
