Motorola Q due out May 31
Bloomberg
Province
Motorola hopes its new Motorola Q, a new smartphone that will be released in a week, will become more popular than the Blackberry.
Motorola Inc., the world’s second-largest maker of mobile phones, said it will release May 31 its Q phone and e-mail device designed to challenge the BlackBerry.
Verizon Wireless will sell the Q for $199.99 after a $100 rebate with a two-year wireless agreement, Motorola said.
The Q phone, being released two months behind schedule, represents Chief Executive Officer Ed Zander’s effort to crack the dominance of Waterloo, Ont.-based Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry and tap burgeoning demand for phones that also act as e-mail devices and day planners. That market may grow ninefold to 52 million users by 2010, according to FTN Midwest analyst Ben Bollin.
“The Q packs a lot of wallop and we expect to sell a lot of them,” said Zander, refusing to provide sales targets.
Research In Motion plans to add cameras and music players to the BlackBerry to counter competition from Motorola and larger rival Nokia Oyj. Research In Motion last month said it has almost five million subscribers and expects to add 675,000 by June 3.
The Q will run on Windows Mobile 5.0, an operating system from Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software company.
Zander, 59, aims to appeal to both business clients and professional people.
“You have to go with the software that has volume, and for the enterprise market today, that’s Microsoft,” he said.
Motorola was scheduled to release the Q before the end of March. On April 18, Zander said they were “very close” to the release. He didn’t give reasons for the delay.
The company now plans to further develop the phone and add more versions within the next two years, he said.
Research In Motion last year had 75 percent of the so-called smartphone market, compared with Motorola’s one per cent, said Bollin, a Boston-based analyst. By 2010, Motorola may increase its share to 15 percent and Research In Motion might fall to 52 percent, said the firm.
Zander is relying on sales of new higher-priced phones, including the Q, to help reach his goal of increasing operating margins.
© The Vancouver Province 2006