Motorola Unveils New Rokr And Moto Z10 Phone

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Source - http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=motoro...nveils-new-rokr

Motorola unveils new Rokr and Moto Z10 phone

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Motorola Inc <MOT.N>, the world's third biggest mobile phone maker, on Sunday unveiled two new cell phones and a plan to buy Asian digital music service Soundbuzz Pte Ltd. as it looks to stem recent market share losses.

Motorola unveiled the Rokr E8 music phone which, when switched on, is controlled by virtual buttons that vibrate when touched. When switched off, it has no visible control keys. The device also highlights and enables different buttons depending on whether the music player, phone or camera is being used.

The company also announced the Moto Z10, a video phone with editing capability and enough storage space for 24 hours of footage in an effort to appeal to young consumers who like to share videos with their friends.

Motorola has been under pressure to come up with new phone designs as it has been losing mobile phone market share to rivals such as Nokia and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd in the past year. And it has come under criticism for failing to come up with a strong successor to its flagship Razr phone.

It also faces competition from Apple Inc which entered the cell phone market with its iPhone in June.

Stu Reed, the head of Motorola's cell phone unit, said that the latest phones were part of the company's plan to frequently come out with new products to build a broad phone range.

"We want to sell a broad portfolio. We don't want to be dependent on one phone ever again. We're not about one phone," Reed said in an interview at Motorola's product launch event on the sidelines of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Reed took over as mobile phone chief last July as part of a slew of management changes that most recently had Chief Executive Ed Zander stepping down after the company posted losses for two out of three quarters of 2007.

Greg Brown, who became CEO on January 1, did not attend the CES launch event, disappointing some analysts.

The latest phones are expected to go on sale and "ramp up production" in the first quarter, Reed said. Motorola plans to use the morphing virtual keypad in future phones, he said.

"We anticipate we'll use that again," he said without giving details.

The Rokr E8 phone does not run on high-speed wireless networks but supports a slower technology standard known as EDGE. Motorola did not reveal pricing.

"If this is priced right it could be a huge hit," said Current Analysis analyst Avi Greengart, referring to the Rokr E8. He noted, however, that Nokia already has similar video editing capabilities in some of its advance phones.

The Z10 video phone supports high-speed wireless Internet services and is expected to appeal to bloggers or young people who like to create, edit and share videos on the go.

"In the past we were just cameramen, now we are producers," said Jeremy Dale a market executive for Motorola. "The Moto Z10 is about filmmaking on the fly."

Motorola also said it agreed to buy privately held Soundbuzz, a digital music provider in South East Asia. It sells full tracks and ringtones directly to consumers and via white label services for wireless service providers.

Dale said that the acquisition and the new phones were part of Motorola's plan to compete directly with dedicated portable digital music MP3 players in the next year and a half.

"We'll show you in the next 12 to 18 months that our music player phones are better MP3 players than MP3 players themselves," he said.