Motorola boss hails smart phone's future

Motorola's chief executive is travelling lighter these days, and he predicts the rest of the mobile work force will too.

PC-like features are being ported over to mobile phones with increasing frequency, pushing the phone down the same path that led to the PC's dominant role in home and office technology, said Motorola's Ed Zander during his keynote speech at Software 2007, an industry conference in California.

"We're making a bet that what happened to PCs will happen to these [smart phones]," said Zander.

A movement is afoot within the software industry to create micro-applications, such as customer-relationship management software, forecasting systems and revenue-tracking software, and load them on to these handheld devices, said Zander.

But whether the smart phone will one day become just a platform for software stacks has yet to be seen, he noted.

Motorola, which heightened its brand recognition among consumers with its popular thin phone, the Razr, is aiming to increase its presence in the enterprise market. Last autumn, Motorola announced plans to acquire Good Technology, which develops enterprise mobile messaging and mobile intranet products.

Among the challenges the company has faced over the past four months, Zander said, is instilling a sense of urgency for innovation and hitting the right markets with its mobile phones.

Motorola aims to make smart phones that offer both enterprise and consumer features, including the ability to seamlessly interact with the wired devices in a user's home. One consumer smart-phone application, for example, would allow a user who is on the road to remotely program a home-based digital video recorder.

Motorola's competitors are also turning to software applications to enhance their prospects. Nokia, which holds the largest market share in mobile phones, is promoting new applications designed to make surfing the Internet via phone similar to the user's Web-surfing experience on a PC. To that end, Nokia is providing third-party developers widgets, or tools, to facilitate creation of applications for smart phones using Symbian Series 60 software platform.