SAN FRANCISCO-Motorola Inc. plans to release its new dynamic idle-screen technology, dubbed Screen3, to U.S. wireless users in time for this year’s holiday season. Although the company declined to provide specifics, Motorola’s Jeff Merkel said Screen3 would be on a handful of Motorola devices later this year.
Screen3 is listed among the features for Motorola’s Pebl and Slvr phones, which are scheduled to hit store shelves later this year.
Motorola’s Screen3 technology essentially pushes Internet information to a mobile phone’s main screen. Thus, users can get news updates or the latest weather forecasts with just a glance at their phones, without having to open sluggish WAP browsers or other applications.
“That type of simplicity … is what makes Screen3 so innovative,” said Merkel, head of Motorola’s interactive media solutions unit. “It’s about linking users to the content they want.”
Merkel showed off a demo phone running Screen3 at a Motorola press event last week at the CTIA Wireless I.T. show. The application ran a series of news headlines across the bottom of the phone’s home screen, along with a small picture. Users immediately could access a short summary of the news story by clicking on the right arrow-the content was cached in the phone and updated on a regular basis. If users want additional information, they would click the “more” soft key to launch the phone’s WAP browser, which would surf directly to the full news story.
Users could subscribe to a variety of carrier-approved content services through Screen3, Merkel said. For example, adding information from Rolling Stone would cost $2 per month.
Merkel said Screen3 has a variety of uses. Carriers can use it to promote new services and features without bombarding subscribers with text or multimedia messages. The service also could link to video clips or applications instead of just WAP pages. Indeed, Merkel said Motorola even is researching an advertising angle to Screen3-offering CNN content sponsored by Ford, for example.
“It’s incredibly valuable real estate on the home screen of the phone,” Merkel said.
