Google’s Motorola wasn’t as special as you may think. At MWC, Motorola’s SVP of Supply Chain and Operations, Mark Randall — along with SVP of Software Engineering Steve Horowitz — spoke about their company’s time with Google. Some of the commentary we knew, but some is enlightening, showing that moving forward, Moto is going to be Moto again.
We’d heard former CEO Dennis woodside say on several occasions that Google gave no special attention to Motorola. There were no special inroads to Android, and no preferential treatment was given. Motorola’s popular new handsets are a result of Motorola, not Google’s heavy-handed approach, according to Randall.
With regard to the Moto X and Moto G, They say all the innovation there came from listening to customers, and responding accordingly. More to the point, it came from Motorola, not Google. Motorola took the time to listen to what we wanted, and delivered.
Another interesting tale comes with Motorola’s take on Android, where many believe Google had the most input. Randall says Google had nothing to do with Motorola’s Android, and Horowitz said he waited in the lobby before meetings like any other OEM. Horowitz also had the following telling statement to offer:
I know where [our] strengths are and I feel that Android’s something to leave with the Android engineers. We’re not about making useless changes. This strategy lets us ship Android upgrades at a much faster rate than anyone else. For example we shipped our KitKat upgrade to the Moto X 19 days after release.
When it comes to Lenovo, Horowitz was complimentary, noting that Lenovo offers them a way to ramp up production. He also said they’d provide “better access to better and newer tech.” That’s good news for Moto fans moving forward. If Motorola was really the brains and brawn behind all the newer innovation, their partnership with Lenovo can only help them.
Source: Phone Arena
Humm, Motorola hasn’t had a hit smartphone since the RAZR…which wasn’t that big of a deal…Google buys them & the Moto X & Moto G take off making the Moto G Motos most popular phone ever….I guess it’s possible Google had nothing to do with it.
Well, if I had to put down percentages to what I most like about my Moto X, it would be 25 Touchless, 25 Active notifications, and 50 for the nearly stock Google experience. I think I’m not alone with those weights, so I would say Google has a lot do do with Moto’s more recent success.
I can definitely see this as plausible. Motorola was abandoning their custom UI long before the Google buyout. Several of the DROID series before the Mini, Ultra, and Maxx, were very much vanilla save the circles widget and a few other tweaks.
If this was entirely self-contained, I have high hopes for Motorola in the future.
I just hope Lenovo listens to its customers as well as Motorola did. If so, they’re going to have a very successful company on their hands.