Motorola unveils phone vending machines
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Consumers needing a cell phone or accessories on the run have a new option now that Motorola Inc. has rolled out a series of what the company calls "robotic stores."
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Motorola Inc , the world's  third biggest mobile phone maker, on Sunday unveiled two new  cell phones and a plan to buy Asian digital music service  Soundbuzz Pte Ltd. as it looks to stem recent market share  losses.
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&quot;Razr&quot;-sharp marketing: Motorola (nyse: MOT - news - people ) on Tuesday announced the US launch of the wafer-thin cell phone that it hopes will be the core of a suite of 20 new handsets.
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Motorola Inc , the world's  third biggest mobile phone maker, on Sunday unveiled two new  phones and a plan to buy Asian digital music service Soundbuzz  as it looks to stem recent market share losses.
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U.S.-based Motorola unveiled a range of new handsets on Monday that will be built around its popular RAZR model, and showed a long-awaited music phone with Apple's iTunes music player software.
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Motorola Inc , which has  recently lost cell phone market share, is introducing a mobile  device for playing live television to expand its reach in  portable consumer electronics.
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The firms aim to provide services and equipments for businesses hoping to attract shoppers using their mobile phones to pay for snacks and concert tickets.
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Motorola Inc , the world's  third biggest cell phone maker, on Thursday introduced a mobile  media player that shows live television, on-demand video clips  and programming saved on digital video recorders.
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Motorola Inc. will be conducting a field trial of mobile phones enabled with MasterCard PayPass, a new &quot;contactless&quot; payment option that will allow users to use their phones to make payments.
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DoCoMo previously procured FOMA handsets only from domestic manufacturers. The two companies -- Motorola and DoCoMo -- said they aim to market the new handset from next spring targeting business users.
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Motorola Inc. introduced two additions to its Razr phone family at its annual analysts' meeting, hoping they will be hits during the end-of-year holiday shopping season.
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(InfoWorld) - The day afterÂ announcing that 4,000 employees will be laid off, Motorola CEO Ed Zander told investors that he plans to boost profits with a wide range of multimedia handsets instead of relying on a single blockbuster product like the Razr cell phone. "We're not going to have another Razr. Every once in a while, something will pop, but there have been only three in recent years -- the Microtec, the Startec, and the Razr," Zander said Thursday in a webcast address at the Lehman Brothers Worldwide Wireless and Wireline Conference in New York. Now the company is preparing to launch products in Europe and Asia during June and July: theÂ Razr2 cell phone,Â Moto Z8 handset with a digital music player and mobile TV, Moto Q 9 mobile e-mail smartphone, and Rokr Z6, a handheld MP3 music player and cell phone. "So there are four of them, which proves we can still design some pretty wild things. But we need more of them at more price points with more geographies and more carriers," Zander said. A wider range of products will allow Motorola to focus on its twin strategies of selling low-end handsets in emerging markets such as the Middle East and southeast Asia through channel distributors and retail partners, and selling high-end handsets in Europe, China, and Japan. Zander acknowledged that competing vendors, such as Nokia and Sony Ericsson, have already gotten a start in those areas, but said Motorola will catch up fast with the widespread emergence of WiMax wireless networks in the U.S. "We're still very PC-centric with MP3 over here, we're very tethered. But in Europe and Asia and even Latin America, it's more of an over-the-air experience to download music and video. Hopefully, that will change in the U.S. as we get these networks installed in the second half of 2007 and in 2008." However, Motorola faces an uphill climb to regain its lost market share, according to a study released Thursday. Nokia surged forward on mobile phone sales in China and Japan during the first quarter of 2007, padding its dominant lead over competitors, according to Gartner. The overall industry sold 257.4 million units during the first quarter, a healthy growth rate of 14 percent over the same quarter last year, despite the annual post-holiday sales slump in Western Europe and North America, Gartner said. But Nokia outperformed its rivals, claiming 35.7 percent market share for a large lead over Motorola's 18.5 percent, Samsung's 12.5 percent, Sony Ericsson's 8.4 percent, and LG Electronics' 6.2 percent. Motorola suffered from stocking its channel resellers with excess products in the first quarter, forcing them to drop prices to push the phones into end-users' hands, Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi said in the report. That problem will persist through the second quarter, but the company could rebound if there is strong demand for the Razr2, she said. Zander admitted the company had been tripped up when those slowing sales threatened to overwhelm corporate overhead costs. "The last few months have been very unsettling," he said. "January and February caught us by surprise, quite frankly. We did have to pull the trigger quickly with some headcount expenses, we had to get that done quickly." The latest layoffs came just four months afterÂ Zander announced a round of 3,500 job cuts in January. Together, the layoffs will allow Motorola to save nearly $1 billion every year, giving it the flexibility to increase funding for new areas of research in the fast-changing mobile handset segment, he said. But first, Zander faces the task of reassuring workers who were shaken by the downsizing. "I'm spending the better part of this week traveling around the country talking to employees because they get nervous. We have to get back on track," he said.
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The Mobile World Congress is seeing the introduction of a wealth of gadgets to meet needs and desires.
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(InfoWorld) - Vending machines are not just about soda and candy and chips anymore. Wireless technologies that enable credit card purchases are spurring companies to market a wider variety of items from vending machines--everything from suntan lotion to golf balls to consumer electronics. Say, for example, your cell phone dies and you desperately need to replace it. These days you can simply buy a new one from a vending machine. How about a new pair of shoes? For awhile, Reebok was selling sneakers this way. "Cashless is really opening up the marketplace for what one would call very high-ticket items," says Steve Herbert, president and chief operating officer for USA Technologies. His company's e-Port hardware, which can be installed in vending machines, handles credit card processing, tracks inventory and monitors the "health and welfare" of the machines, alerting technicians in case of trouble. The device, used by customers including Motorola and Reebok, includes a general packet radioÂ­ service cellular connection. While the wireless credit card payment capability solves the problem of requiring end users to stuff $100 or more in cash into a machine, it also solves a related problem: At $1.50 or $2 for a soda, the currency systems in a soda machine can fill up before the machine is empty, Herbert says, cutting into potential sales and profits. Operators want to allow users to buy with credit cards in order to be able to sell every last item in the machine. The e-Port and related software also fuel a variety of wireless applications beyond vending. Sony uses software from USA Technologies in digital photo printing kiosks to enable credit card authorization and head off problems. For example, if paper runs out, the software tells a technician that it's time for a refill. Next up: a vending machine that sells gold wedding rings? It would be a hit in Las Vegas for sure.
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Motorola Inc , the world's No. 3 mobile phone maker, said on Thursday it is exploring strategic alternatives including a possible separation of its mobile devices business from other units.
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The mobile phone maker will support tiny data storage devices and their multimedia cards.
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Motorola introduced several new phones on Monday at the 3GSM Conference in Barcelona, including a new line aimed at emerging markets, and a slider that opens in  a curve to match the contour of the user's face.