Motorola held their quarterly earnings call today and CEO Sanjay Jha revealed lots of new Android information. Among the news, was the first report that Motorola would produce Android phones for the iDEN network. Prepaid phones have continued to perform well and carriers are hungry for new phones that would allow them to attach more data plans.
After beating analysts predictions for Q2, Motorola’s stock jumped nearly 10% on Thursday. One of biggest successes for their mobile division was the new iDEN Clutch i465 which is sold on Sprint’s Boost Mobile unit. Analysts have concluded that as much as a third of Motorola’s handset sales were due to Boost Mobile, who had 938,000 net customer additions last quarter.
Boost Mobile offers phones with prepaid plans. They currently offer a flat rate plan for $50 with unlimited minutes, text, and data. After the last quarter they now have 4.4 million subs. Nearly every phone they offer is built by Motorola with prices ranging from $49-299. Boost Mobile originally began as a division of Nextel which is why they operate on the Sprint/Nextel iDEN network.
Sanjay Jha, Motorola CEO, said “In iDEN we will continue to refresh the portfolio, which will also include Android-based devices. We continue to have pretty good traction with iDEN and with the recent renewed focus from Sprint on prepaid, we have a pretty good market share with Sprint in prepaid and we’re improving our relationships with not just Sprint, but every single North American carrier across the portfolio.”
Motorola will only be launching 2 Android phones this holiday season, but expects to make Android their focus for 2010. Jha expressed his desire to bring Android to the low end phones. “Our core strategy really is to take Android and take Android to as low down the feature phone tier, as we possibly can, by bringing in Smartphone features, best of Internet, best of messaging, best of multi-media, best of location services.”
These low end Android phones will still offer a robust internet experience. When asked about how low end phones would differ from the high end Jha responded, “I suspect that in both of them you need to provide sufficient capabilities that there is a probability, a high probability of attach rate of data plan. I expect that you would see some tiering of data plans and data plan for low end and high end will be different. We’re actually quite focused on working with carriers to make sure that we could enable for that to occur, so that even in the low end Android Smartphones carriers can get data plan and have an ability to subsidize those devices a little more aggressively.”
It will be really interesting to see what type of experience these low end phones will offer. Motorola repeatedly emphasized their close relationship with Google and I would not be surprised if they were working together on a lite version of Android for feature phones. Android engineers expressed at Google I/O that the G1 was the lowest device they considered when coding for performance. Anything less would be too slow to run Android the way it was intended.
No exact time frame was given for these low end phones, but they should arrive next year. It is critical to Motorola’s turnaround that they bring Android to the lower level. Smartphones make more money, but are just a small percentage of the overall handset market. Jha left no doubt that Android is the primary focus for 2010. He said they were “making sure that we can bring the price points of those devices as low as possible in a profitable way. If we don’t break even in 2010 I’d be disappointed.”
Android on Boost Mobile: Where ya at?
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Taylor Wimberly
Taylor is the founder of Android and Me. He loves playing with all kinds of gadgets, but most importantly cell phones. His other hobbies include cooking (BBQ hero!), politics, football, and watching every MMA event possible.
14 Comments
I would definitely purchase an Android phone if it were offered by Boost. I have been using Boost mobile for years now and even if one of theses phones were to cost $300-$400 bucks,I would save that in the first few months of owning it compared to the high cost data plans the major carriers have. Not to mention stuck to a contract for 2 years..
These people need to get the hint. We people that use prepaid have been burnt by contracts. We are hungry for phones that match iphones and blackberries, we are consumers hungry for the same tools available to everyone else and we pay for it, often times paying more than those with contracts. So why the delays in comparable phone technologies? Are we seen as second rate consumers, boost users are pigeon holed as “urban”. I am a professional and I resent being branded as urban. The “hip” voice when I “re-boost” is derogatory. The slow introduction of a full featured line of phones, with no technical stumbling blocks deliberately in place, is an outright slap in the face to anyone that is paying attention to what is offered to other consumers. Come on Boost, or Sprint, or Motorola give us what we want, iden phones that measure up to your competition. Update your imagine so that consumers take you more seriously, “urban” people don’t need a “hip” voice menu, just good service and straight forward cost.
WOW!! Well said.
I really don’t care how Boost is marketing their service. They are idiots if they think we care. $50 for all you can eat. Sign me up. Can we use the HTC hero on Boost?
nope.
Thank you I agree 100%
If Boost is Owned by Sprint… Then whats the Big Deal if We as Boost mobile customers had the opportunity to purchase these new cell phones with our mobile carriers, They use Motorola devices Correct? I say let the others contract out your phones as AT&T did with Iphone.. I am a Boost customer with unlimited service give us the good stuff as well Already, As Jay Z would say.. C’mon man What To It?? Really 2 thumbs up for Non -contract cell phone ppl like myself WE ROCK MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yea
If Motorola makes a touchscreen phone with the walkie-talkie built in – it is all over with for the other prepaid companies. Sprint should add the walkie-talkie to the Instinct or the Palm pre or Pixie. This will be the game changer in prepaid…..Do you know how hard it is for people to put those three touchscreen phones down. Microsoft live search, say a command, information at the touch of a button, self updating or press the refresh button to get upto date info – winners in my book….the phone even talks to you and says the person who is calling you before you pick the phone up or it speaks that you have new mail(Instinct)and built in GPS.These are simple, clean and easy to use devices. Customizing these phones are easy too…No difficulty in that department….
Can we use the Samsung Moment from Sprint on Boost?