Motorola sees RAZR successor by end of 2006

Motorola Inc expects to unveil the follow-up to its trendy RAZR phone by the end of next year with a new flagship design, the company's chief designer said on June 9. This year Motorola, the world's No. 2 cellphone maker, hopes to boost its sales by pushing phones with design elements from the ultra-thin, clamshell-shaped RAZR, which became a status symbol and design icon when it was introduced at the end of 2004.
In the fourth quarter, it plans to start selling the PEBL, a curvier version of the RAZR, and the SLVR, a candybar-shaped version of the RAZR.
But consumers will be ready for the next big thing in phones about two years after the RAZR's introduction, Jim Wicks said in an interview. "(Phones) are really consumery things and people treat them like that," said Wicks, comparing the fashion in phones to fashions in shirts - discarded after a couple of summers.
"By the end of 2006 you'll start to see what's next," said Wicks. "You'll see something that breaks ground in new areas."
Style has become increasingly important for technology products. The RAZR created a buzz around Motorola's designs in recent months, while the striking looks of products such as the iPod music player and iMac computer have helped Apple Computer reinvent itself in recent years.
Wicks, who is already wrapping up Motorola's design plans for 2006, said that one of the main difficulties in developing a phone is keeping designs simple as cellphones can now incorporate everything from cameras to music players. "The industry is changing from being about communications devices to consumer devices," he said. "Figuring out what not to put in is the hardest design challenge."
Phones designed around specific advanced features such as television or music could be important in the future, but most people still use cell phones mainly to communicate either by talking or text messages, Wicks said.
Wicks said another major design challenge is balancing the demands from mobile network operators, which control what features go into the phones they sell, with Motorola's brand direction and its own ideas of what consumers want. He declined to comment on whether Motorola is working on phones based on specific features such as gaming. Motorola's biggest rival, Nokia, designed its N-Gage phone specifically for video game enthusiasts.