Zander hits the road with new handsets, I-can attitude

Having survived an attempted coup by dissident shareholder Carl Icahn earlier this week, Motorola CEO Ed Zander hit the road this week to tout Tuesday’s launch of his company’s new 3G handsets.
Zander appeared yesterday at Software 2007 in Santa Clara, Calif., according to Reuters, telling an audience that next week’s release will include a handset with advanced video capabilities using a microSD card. He said the tiny memory cards might serve as the next medium for the portable storage of movies, much as DVDs have been the medium in the wired world.
Motorola’s lack of 3G-enabled handsets in its portfolio-particularly at a time when growth in that segment is strong-has been widely discussed as contributing to Moto’s current weakness in the mobile handset market.
According to analyst Tero Kuittinen at Avian Securities L.L.C., the wireless industry will watch for three elements in next week’s handset announcements from Motorola:
Are the handsets based on the legacy Razr platform?
If so, has the company managed to give the platform a new look and feel?
And will the handsets be sufficiently packed with advanced features to overcome the perception that Motorola is completely stuck on style?
“It’s possible that the design changes are sufficient to convince consumers that they’re totally new, but I don’t think so,” Kuittinen said. “These phones probably were designed when Motorola thought that the Razr platform was so appealing that they could clone it across all their high-end products. I’ll look to see whether there are new design elements there. If not, I think it could simply compound their problems.
“The other question is: What is the technology level of these phones? Nokia and Samsung have really upped the stakes. Motorola hasn’t really competed on features in several years because they were design-oriented. Next week we’ll find out what level of technology they’re mapping out for the second half of 2007.”