Rumor has it that Motorola (NYSE: MOT ) is about to launch an Android phone of its own. Red Herring cites a job posting where the technology giant looks for a Senior Staff Interaction Designer to oversee an upcoming Android Social Networking Smartphone. It's way too early to invest in that rumor, though.
The Moto Android is very likely already in the works, as the company is part of the 34-company Open Handset Alliance. Don't expect it to happen anytime soon, though. Leading Android champion Google (Nasdaq: GOOG ) will have to wait a while for a handset as American as Grandma's apple pie.
For example, Motorola is still looking for a Senior Product Manager for User Experience for this project, whose job duties will include driving "overall interaction design and user experience requirements for our Android-based products," as well as "setting product direction" and "defining product roadmap." Those are very basic requirements for getting a major hardware project off the ground and that job listing is still out there, unfilled.
Motorola's user design group wants to "pull the company toward our inevitable future of highly connected, social experiences." Sounds great, and I can't wait for the Facebook integration this team might cook up. It'll just have to happen in more traditional handset models for a while, until the Android sub-team can get all geared up.
If Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S ) -- the only North American mobile service operator on the OHA's member roster besides Deutsche Telekom's (NYSE: DT ) T-Mobile -- wants an Android model any time soon, it would be with some other hardware partner. Prime suspects include Samsung and LG Electronics (both South Korean), and perhaps HTC of Taiwan can be convinced to make Androids for partners other than T-Mobile.
And, of course, we can't expect Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM ) or Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL ) to abandon their own tightly controlled phone platforms in favor of the open Android architecture. They've invested too much in the iPhone and BlackBerry software to turn on a dime now. Even Nokia (NYSE: NOK ) has its Symbian environment to promote. It'll be up to the Far Easteners and Motorola to show us what the Android can do for the foreseeable future.
For now, let's just settle for the T-Mobile HTC G1. But does it dream of electric sheep?
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