SAN FRANCISCO—Sanjay Jha, Motorola’s co-CEO and CEO of mobile devices, today delivered his highly anticipated keynote at the GigaOM ’09 conference. As expected, Jha treated conference attendees to an unveiling of Motorola’s first Android handset, the CLIQ.
As expected, T-Mobile USA, a carrier that focuses heavily on Android, was announced as the exclusive carrier partner for the device. Cole Brodman, chief technology and innovation officer for T-Mobile, was on hand for the unveiling. Brodman said the device will be available in time for the holidays and will come in two colors, winter white and titanium.
Perhaps most notably, the CLIQ features a user interface called MOTOBLUR, which features deep social networking and contact integration, while also placing a high priority on personalization. MOTOBLUR comes with a variety of personalization widgets. One such widget, called Happenings, allows for real-time updates from social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, among others.
Some of the CLIQ’s hardware highlighted in Jha’s keynote included such features as Wi-Fi, a 5-MP camera, 3.5 mm headphone jack, HTML browser from Google and turn-by-turn navigation.
Many have tried to cast today’s announcement as Motorola’s Hail Mary, a notion Jha denied. “Is this phone a make-or break-point for us? No. But this represents a very important starting point for us,” he said.
In a Q&A after the announcement, Jha was asked how he would improve on the iPhone. Jha’s response was flip and warmly received. “I have not given even a wit of thought to that question,” he said.
