Mobile manufacturer Motorola is expected to deploy Google’s Android operating system on future devices as part of a major technology overhaul that may see job cuts and the reduction of old hardware platforms.
Reports began circulating earlier this week that Motorola is working on a social networking smart phone with Android at its centre, which will enter markets in the second quarter of next year.
According to a report in Business Week, the Motorola Android phone will feature a touchscreen, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and will work with social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.
Motorola may also reduce the number of operating systems on its various phones down to three core operating systems.
Many of these strategic changes are understood to be at the instigation of new co-CEO, Sanjay Jha, who joined Motorola from Qualcomm.
These events could represent a major shift in fortunes for Motorola, which has been beset by restructuring, executive departures, lost market share and falling profits.
The move to a new touchscreen phone represents a long hiatus of innovation from the former world cell phone leader, which saw the company trade on the RAZR’s form factor for at least four years.
In related news, it has emerged that a security flaw has been detected on the G1 Android phone manufactured by HTC.
The browser in the G1, which goes on sale in the UK tomorrow, is understood to have a security loophole which hackers could have used to trick G1 users into visiting a rogue website that would secretly install keystroke-logging software onto the phone.
This would allow the hackers to monitor and record buttons pressed, making it easier to steal identity-based information such as log-ins and passwords for banking or shopping websites.
By John Kennedy
