I was shocked to learn that Motorola Mobility is most likely working on its own mobile operating system. I want to call someone at Motorola to say, “Uh, didn’t you guys fail at this already?” and, “Haven’t you been watching Nokia’s downfall?” While it seems prudent to diversify offerings, I also think it’s a monumental waste of money for Motorola to develop a new mobile operating system at this time. Here’s the scoop from InformationWeek:
Motorola Mobility has hired a number of experienced mobile and Web engineers from Apple and Adobe and is developing a Web-based mobile operating system as a possible alternative to Google’s Android software, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Over the past nine months, Motorola has been hiring engineering talent that would well-suited to create a new mobile operating system. Its team appears to include a significant number of ex-Apple and Adobe personnel, including Gilles Drieu, VP of software engineering at Motorola Mobility, Benoit Marchant, director of engineering at Motorola Mobility, and Sean Kranzberg, also a director of engineering at Motorola Mobility.
The consumer smartphone market is currently dominated by Apple iOS and Google Android. RIM’s BlackBerry OS is still immensely popular on the corporate side, but its market share will probably continue to decline. Microsoft is aggressively trying to establish Windows Phone 7. It’s a fresh and interesting OS that’s backed by a ton of MS money, but it seems unlikely to nab a significant piece of the market. The same goes for the innovative webOS, which is now owned by HP — great product that will probably never achieve notable market share. As you can see, the mobile market is full of quality operating systems. (It also has Samsung Bada. *zing*)
Assuming InformationWeek’s sources are correct, I can’t believe that Motorola wants to get in this race. Do you think it’s wise for Motorola to build its own OS? Or is the company out of its frickin’ mind?
