Motorola: Expect more Razr phones

Motorola attempted to explain at the 3GSM World Congress what's next after its popular ultra-thin Razr phone, but some experts aren't impressed by the plan.

In 2006, customers should expect to see more Razrs in different forms, such as a slider, rotater, PDA and with a Qwerty keyboard, said Ron Garriques, president of mobile devices for Motorola, speaking on Monday at the conference. The current Razrs are clamshell phones.

Several days ago, Motorola launched the first Razr slider phone, called Z, in Korea, he said. Motorola also plans to launch a device to be called Ming in China that will be a Razr PDA device. Motorola's Q Razr phone, which looks similar to the BlackBerry device and contains a Qwerty keyboard, will also become available operating on the European UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) networks late in the fourth quarter.

Garriques very vaguely hinted at Scpl (pronounced "scalpel"), a platform to follow Razr that he described as the next must-have phone.

The Razr's success helped Motorola increase by 3 percentage points in 2005 its share of shipped mobile phones worldwide, according to IDC. The question now is whether Motorola can maintain the momentum.

Analysts have wondered if Motorola's success with the Razr phone will follow a similar path as the vendor's notorious experience with the StarTac phone. Motorola was quite successful with the StarTac design and set a trend in the market but failed to follow it with other winning phones and soon began to quickly lose market share.

"I do think they need to look beyond the Razr," said David Kerr, an analyst with Strategy Analytics Inc. While he said that Motorola is better positioned now than during the StarTac period because it has a stronger relationship with operators and a more diverse product line, he also said that Motorola will have to continue to innovate on the Razr.

Kerr expected Motorola to make a bigger announcement at 3GSM than it did, perhaps a mini-tablet PC type device or a device outside of the mobile phone space.

Motorola is largely showcasing devices and services that have already been announced but it did introduce some new products. It announced on Monday two handsets, the L2 and V195, that are designed for business users and don't include cameras.

Motorola also announced the W220, a low-cost, thin clamshell phone that includes an FM radio. The handset is designed for emerging markets, such as India or Africa. In the second quarter, Motorola said it will introduce the Slvr L7 and L6 models with i-mode for the European market.

Motorola also announced that it will integrate Microsoft's Windows Media technology on some Motorola handsets. The handsets will support Windows Media Digital Rights Management and Windows Media Audio and will be able to connect to PCs via USB 2.0.

Separately, Motorola on Monday made an announcement in the U.K. that it will supply handsets that support voice over Wi-Fi and cellular for British Telecommunications PLC's Fusion service. Fusion lets users have a single phone that supports voice calls over a Wi-Fi network in the home and cellular networks outside of the home. The handsets will replace current handsets from BT that operate over Bluetooth rather than Wi-Fi.