Last week on May 15th, Motorola CEO's Ed Zander went on stage to show that his company was still able to deliver attractive handsets to the mobile market and maintain its competitive positioning. The recent period has indeed not been dear to Motorola that is still recovering from the RAZR hangover and its over-reliance on this model. As a result, market share fell sharply - while Samsung, SonyEricsson and LG became the new darlings to challenge Nokia - last quarter's operations resulted in a loss close to $200m and the overall disarray was significant enough to attract the shareholder activist Carl Icahn and start a proxy war...

Motorola's answer is quite underwhelming...and I am putting a positive spin on it. They came on stage highlighting only 4 handsets, only one being "new". They dared resurrect an old Asian stylus-activated smartphone to say that they were ahead of the iPhone in terms of innovation. They went on to present the RIZR Z8 and Q9 as new products, even though they were introduced 3 months ago at 3GSM and are already starting to show their age versus current products on the market, even though they are still to be launched ! Even though the Z8 is a powerful phone, it lost the powerhouse race to the Nokia N95. Similarly, there are already on the market far more well-rounded smartphones than the Q9 - Samsung BlackJack anyone?

The best was the RAZR 2. First I am surprised that Motorola is considering it the 2nd iteration of the RAZR, as several models and updates occured since the first RAZR was launched 2.5 years ago: V3, V3i, V3 EVDO, V3x, V3 MAXX, V3xx.... THis is not even the first 3.5G RAZR! Is it just because the antenna is flattened at the bottom of the chassis? Sure the phone has pretty good functionalities - HSPDA, full browser, external 2in screen,... - but nothing revolutionary compared to what is already available.

I might be wrong but given the kinds of benchmarks that some 3G handsets - SonyEricsson w880i, Samsung U700 and LG Shine - have set, it will still be tough for Motorola over the next 6 months...What they really need is to throw away the RAZR blueprint and start anew with no legacy. It might result in something that could be as attractive as the iPhone. After all, Motorola has a track record in launching successful handsets such as the StarTac and V50...