Motorola to focus less on Motoblur, more on products

Today's smartphone market is overflowing with devices and their hardware specs (processors, screens, and so on) are becoming increasingly similar among the brands, so it's understandable that a company would turn to software to add its own unique spin to the devices.

For Motorola, its solution for Android was Motoblur. Introduced and heavily promoted on the Motorola Cliq, Motoblur was about instant connection to your social networks and contacts. At the time, the company saw it as a key aspect to its comeback, but now, Moto is shifting its focus.

During its Q2 2010 earnings call, Motorola's CEO, Sanjay Jha, said Motoblur continues to be important and that it will keep on evolving the software to increase functionality. However, Jha also admitted that it's hard to convey the value of Motoblur in a 30-second ad and going forward, it will concentrate more on its products. In fact, we've already seen this shift with the launch of the Motorola Droid X where the company downplayed the software and focused more on the features of the phone. It also looks like this will be the strategy for the Droid 2.

Frankly, we think this is a wise move on Motorola's part. Though manageable, Motoblur always felt a bit overwhelming and clunky, especially compared with HTC's Sense user experience. Also, as Android and Me point outs, Android 3.0 (aka Gingerbread) could make these custom user interfaces irrelevant.