Motorola is revamping the Razr mobile phone that has defined the company's seesaw fortunes, jamming more technological and user-friendly substance into a handset best known for its looks, an Associated Press report said.
The Associated Press report said Razr 2 was unveiled as the centerpiece to a new phone lineup Motorola hopes will reverse a financial tailspin that's led to the company's first quarterly loss since 2004 and wiped away a third of its stock market value in just half a year.
Executives stressed that, rather than attempting to replicate the smash success of Razr with an entirely new device, the best path to success was to add features and improve performance with more robust software and hardware, the report added.
'The Razr was a double grand slam. These are home runs,' Ed Zander, Motorola CEO, was quoted as saying. 'If you look at consumer electronics, you don't get to create a product like the Razr every five years.'
Zander, who recently fended off a proxy fight by Carl Icahn, said that with a franchise as strong as Razr, all that was needed was to ensure it can satisfy the emerging demand for multimedia and messaging, the report said.
The company also is adding a newly developed technology called Crystal Talk to improve phone call quality, which Zander said remains the most basic function of a cell phone, the report said.
The Razr 2 will be introduced in Asia during July, and elsewhere later in the summer, the report further said.