Android

Motorola’s Android phone: good but compelling enough?

Motorola has launched the Cliq smartphone, its first Android operating system model and one that offers users a kind of “mashup” launch page called Blur (not much marketing zip) that consolidates social network, email, and IM into a single page.

Motorola has been a major laggard in the smartphone space, and it’s now teaming with T-Mobile for the Cliq launch, since T-Mobile has the longest history with Android phones. There are also some international prospects for Cliq, but the problem is that the gadget doesn’t have any really compelling benefit and thus may not be enough to pull through a lot of additional sales for Motorola.

We think the Android choice is smart. Nobody but Apple, Blackberry and Palm can hope to sustain a developer program on their own these days. The problem is that Motorola has waited so long that it’s going to be incredibly hard to differentiate its announcements from the pack.

Google e-book plans target Amazon

Google wants to sell e-books and is working to sign up authors and create a framework for the deal, which would obviously compete with Amazon’s Kindle. We think the two companies have seen each other increasingly as competitors, and for good reason.

Amazon is kind of a “instant-gratification” search option; look up what you want and buy it. The two both provide cloud services, and now Google wants to be an e-book alternative. The threat to Amazon here is real because if Google can make a generic e-book system work, it would have profound impact on the Kindle market. Others have tried to create such a system, however, and it needs a purpose-built appliance to prevent copying. Will Google propose this as a part of Android? It will be interesting to see.