LOS ANGELES–Motorola Inc. is putting the pedal to the metal on getting ideas more rapidly transformed into services with its “Fast Track” program, part of its MotoDev effort to spur innovative services–and, of course, take over the world.
“We want to facilitate getting ideas to market,” said Christy Wyatt, vice president of ecosystems and market development at the Schaumburg, Ill.-based handset giant, who last week during the CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment show sketched Motorola’s efforts in developer relations to aid its vision for seamless mobility. “With MotoDev, the developer community can come to us.”
One recent example: Motorola gave Moto Qs to a group of developers to see what they could create. The next day, one offered a hurricane-tracking application that brought immediate interest from government and business–and, of course, rapt attention from Motorola.
Motorola’s effort to foster application development is multi-pronged and runs through each of the company’s major divisions, from mobile devices to connected homes to the enterprise, according to Wyatt, who joined Motorola a year ago after stints at Apple Computer Inc., Palm Source, Palm Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. “We’re well-networked across our product groups so we can find the right partners.”
That means giving application developers the environment, tools and, in some cases, venture capital to help Motorola attract the brightest ideas and create an ecosystem of partnerships, Wyatt said.
“Motorola and developers are approaching innovation from a device- and service-agnostic perspective,” Wyatt added. “The `wickedly cool’ experiences we’re creating are driven from the customer side. But the experiences come from software, not all of it directly from Motorola. The partnerships with developers can be a key differentiator as we pursue seamless mobility.”
Big ideas translated into those “wickedly cool experiences” will be manifested in the assemblage of devices, networks, systems and services that fit the seamless mobility vision, she said.
Wyatt said that the phrase “seamless mobility” meant, for instance, that the mobile consumer and professional–admit it, the two roles overlap in most of us, particularly in the United States–would be on the go all day, taking care of business and personal matters. Upon arriving home, a connected environment would sync with the handset and vice versa and continue to serve the individual’s needs and desires for information, productivity and entertainment.
One major challenge: digital rights management must develop apace, so that as a customer makes use of myriad services from a profusion of partners in the ecosystem, the right parties receive their due slice of the action, Wyatt said.
Thus Motorola’s effort to encourage a global ecosystem to achieve this vision includes the MotoDev program, launched in May, the Fast Track program announced last week, and Moto Ventures, the venture-capital arm of the company that will fund efforts that promise to grow value in the ecosystem.
“Our Linux efforts are key to this strategy as well,” Wyatt said. “Linux is a core part of our strategy that allows us to innovate without going to another source (for operating systems). We’re committed to Linux because it fits into the ecosystem and offers us lower costs.”
This may well be a veiled reference to the currently dominant market share of the Symbian OS, a technology in which Motorola is involved, but which ships predominantly on competitors’ handsets, including arch rival, Nokia Corp.’s handsets. In Motorola’s effort to surpass its top competitor, it would make sense not to adopt its OS. Wyatt diplomatically demurred when pressed on the point.
Motorola’s goal is to have more than half its devices running on Linux in less than two years, Wyatt said. The vendor will continue to work with Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile for enterprise device users, and where customers demand other platforms, Motorola will provide them.
“We love the projections that Linux might overtake Symbian eventually,” Wyatt said. “But we have to ensure consistency for Linux. We’re spending a lot on the Linux effort to align around a basic set of principles.”
Proof of Linux’ robustness–in response to competitive naysaying–may be found in the company’s Ming device that runs on Linux and sells well in China, Wyatt said. And to the criticism that integrating Linux with various platforms and applications is time-consuming and expensive, Wyatt pointed to the ecosystem of partnerships Motorola seeks to foster. The market will encourage third-party integrators to offer cost-effective services to address that point.
