Motorola touts signature Android apps

Motorola announced a series of third-party applications tied to its forthcoming Android smartphones. The so-called "signature" apps are designed to enable consumers to personalize their phones in conjunction with its new Motoblur user interface, poised to launch in conjunction with the Cliq, Motorola's first Android device. Motorola said partners including Accuweather, Amazon MP3, Barnes & Noble, CardStar, Comcast Entertainment Group, Hands On Mobile, Howcast.com, Midomi, MySpace, QuickOffice, QuickPlay Media, RJDJ, Superpages.com, and Travel Channel are all developing signature apps for the Cliq. It did not specify which if any of the applications will arrive preloaded on the device, however.

Motoblur manages and integrates communications tools spanning from email to social networking, syncing updates, posts, messages and photos from sources including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Gmail. According to Motorola, Motoblur automatically delivers updates to the Cliq's homescreen in easy-to-view streams--users are not required to open or close other applications to view the updates. "It's alive," said Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha during a press event announcing the device. "Think of it like the text bubbles in cartoons, with new information pushed to you all the time."

Motorola said it plans to open up its Motoblur application programming interfaces in an effort to galvanize third-party development for the solution. "Over a period of time--we're not there yet--we'll allow the APIs to be available so people can develop many more applications than we can think of ourselves, but it'll take us a little bit of time to mature ourselves to a place that we could open up APIs," said Jha in an interview with PC World [1]. Jha added that Motoblur is more geared to consumers and prosumers than the enterprise market: "I think you we will see us address [the business] market with subsequent devices."

For more on Motorola's signature apps:
- read this release [2]

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