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Motorola's Phantom Announcement Is A Bad Sign

Motorola is hurting. Bad. It debuted just three new phones this week at one of the largest mobile gatherings around the sphere. All three are re-worked versions of previous models ... for emerging markets. Motorola's tail is officially, and firmly, tucked between its legs.

Things must be worse than we can imagine. Here are several things to indicate just how bad off Motorola really is.

The phones:

Three low-end phones? Are you kidding, Motorola? Your competition just kicked you in the face. Sony Ericsson dropped a major bomb with the Xperia X1 device. Nokia created tons of buzz about the N96 and N78. LG announced two new touch phones, and Samsung offered up an entire range of new models. Where were you? I could go on and on about how disappointing this truly is, but will save you the time.

The booth:

The Motorola booth at MWC was by far the smallest I have ever seen at a trade show from Moto. Every one of Motorola's competitors had a larger presence. There was an auspicious amount of carpet around the Motorola booth, as if it had suddenly scaled down its footprint to save some cash.

The ads:

Barcelona is covered in pink. Pink ads from Samsung touting the new Soul phone. Motorola typically has gigantic banners everywhere with its latest phones splashed across buildings and such. This year? Nothing. In fact, a Samsung representative told me that Motorola called Samsung just before the show and offered it all of its ad spaces in Barcelona. And that leads me up to the biggest indicator of trouble.

The phantom announcement:

Last week an ad firm sent around a link to a YouTube video advertisement from Motorola. It featured people carrying around TVs, PCs, and other equipment. The suggestion was that a new phone from Motorola was going to be released, one that could play mobile TV or support major video or other media playback.

It never happened. There was no announcement. The thoughts of everyone I've spoken to are that Motorola planned a major phone announcement and decided to pull it for some reason. Hence the ads sold off to Samsung.

Motorola, what is going on over there?

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