Motorola CEO Dr. Sanjay K. Jha made one thing unflinchingly clear during yesterday’s keynote at GigaOm’s Mobilize 09 conference: the Cliq is all about Motorola–not Google and certainly not T-Mobile. The focus on the company no doubt stemmed to some degree out of its recent economic woes–the event was something of a make-or-break for Motorola, which, as of late, has been struggling to recapture the success of mid-00 devices like the Razr. On the software side, the event marked the latest in an on-going shift in focus for Android handsets away from Google.
Launched in October of last year, the first Android handset was all about Google–the “G” in T-Mobile G1. The device was branded with Google’s logo and the name HTC was dropped entirely from the device for its US launch. The branding was actually part of a marketing deal with Google that insured the software giant would have a good deal of control over the version Android included on the handset, which meant that it was centered around such Google products as Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Maps, and YouTube.
The focus shifted away from Google a touch with the launch of subsequent handsets from HTC, the T-Mobile myTouch 3G and the HTC Hero. From the talk surrounding both devices, however, it was clear that there was still some emphasis on the OS–in fact, in the UK, the latter is sometimes called the T-Mobile G2.
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