Motorola attempts complete makeover

AIMING TO RE-ESTABLISH its share of the global handset market, Motorola has decided to chase the 'youth' market via a $75 million marketing alliance with MTV. "We're not just an old company wearing a mini-skirt," claimed Geoffrey Frost, vp for global marketing with Motorola PCS.

The tie up is intended to be multifaceted ranging from pre-loading MTV content onto handsets to a 30 minute co-hosted show to be run crossMTV's 38 stations in some 164. The aim will be to promote new musical talent which, unless the INQ was hallucinating at the time, includes Korean singers appearing at raves across 'Greater China'.

To bolster this young, hip image the company has launched the E390 handset at CeBit. This apparently boasts dual speaker technology that can create a 24 channel, '3D polyphonic' sound system. Better still there is the embedded Motomixer ring tone generator which enables the user to create individual, one-off tone remixes. Far out.

To illustrate this point Motorola showed one of its Russian ads which features world famous DJ, Paul Van Dyke. The message it was trying to convey went straight over this reporter's head. Anyway, Motorola plans to increase its hip image by launching a further five new handsets in Q3 2003.

These will be multi-media enabled cameraphones that will be specifically tailored for pan-European operators. Apparently there are six such major operators in Europe. Motorola expects these custom handsets to "really surprise" the market. So they aren't mere imitations of Vodafone's Live! offerings then?

Oh, and these new handsets will perform cool tricks like flashing in time to the beat of the MP3 track they are playing. We think that Motorola is taking its own assertion that twelve year olds are the nuclear family's CTOs far too seriously for its own good. µ