Motorola
MOTORIZR Z8

When Motorola announced the MotoRIZR Z8, it not only managed to surprise the market but also some of its own employees. The device, which used the Symbian operating system and the UIQ user interface, had been developed as a dark project by the former development team of Sendo, which Motorola acquired in June 2005. The device was one of the most talked about products at the 3GSM World Congress show in Barcelona when it was unveiled. It was the fourth Symbian phone to be delivered by Motorola, but notably, it was the first device from any manufacturer to use UIQ 3.1 – a non-touchscreen version of the UIQ platform. Given this significant change to UIQ, the device performed extremely well. At the time, it also increased the pressure on Sony Ericsson (the owner of UIQ), who had struggled to meet time-to-market and performance targets with its three most recent UIQ devices (M600, W950 and P990). The use of the Symbian / UIQ platform for the Z8 was in direct contrast to the overview of Motorola’s software strategy outlined by its President of Devices, Ron Garriques, in January  2007 when he stated Motorola’s business phones would use Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform, its multimedia and feature phones would use Linux and Java, and its entry-level devices would use TTPCom’s AJAR platform. On this basis, at the time, it was widely believed that the Z8 was a tactical product primarily focused on the European market. In reality, the Linux Java platform Motorola was using at the time was simply not powerful enough to support a rich multimedia experience over 3G in the timeframe required to compete with the market leader. It was also a closed OS environment, whereas UIQ had the opportunity to tap into the Symbian Foundation to create an open-access platform and encourage independent, third-party developers to create applications to support this new family of smartphones being developed. The Z8 was clearly designed to compete with Nokia’s Symbian S60 devices which were market best sellers and had proved popular with both end-users and network operators because of their multimedia capabilities – something that the majority of Motorola’s current portfolio did not offer at the time. Also, the similarities between UIQ 3.1 and S60 meant that in theory, it was relatively straightforward for application developers to port existing S60 applications onto the Z8. The device had an innovative “kick slider” design that curved to fit around one’s face (described as a “fit-to-face” design). It quickly became known as the “bendy slider” during the 3GSM World Congress show, where it was announced. It had a 16-million-colour display and supported video playback of 30 frames per second. This made the phone ideally suited to video content and streamed TV, given its support for 3G HSDPA. This was reflected in Motorola’s striking a deal with UK broadcasters BskyB to offer its “anytime” application which allowed Sky customers to use their Z8 to programme their Sky+ boxes remotely. When it announced the Z8, Motorola hoped operator interest in the phone would help it regain market share in the European market and deliver higher margins than some of its current device portfolio. It was pitched as a one-size-fits-all multimedia smartphone with an emphasis on media creation and consumption. You could actually shoot and edit your own film on the device, thanks to a preloaded video editor app. Notably, Universal Pictures and the producers of the Bourne series of movies signed a marketing deal with Motorola to bundle the full-length film of the Bourne Identity with the Z8 and the Bourne Supremacy for the follow-up Z10, along with a premium Bluetooth stereo headset. As part of the deal, the Z8 was supposed to be used on-screen by Matt Damon’s titular character in The Bourne Ultimatum, as filming in London and the device development were in parallel schedules. It could have been a fantastic product placement opportunity to springboard the new device to a global audience. However, because of the phone's secret nature and its prototype software, Motorola in Chicago vetoed this, and RAZR V3s were used instead. In the end, the device failed to live up to expectations, but it was a hugely important product for Motorola in its quest to regain relevance in the European market. In the race to convert the OS from touchscreen to numeric keypad to compete directly with Symbian Series 60, Motorola and the whole industry, including Nokia, had been caught off-guard by how good the user experience of the near 100% capacitive touchscreen environment of the first Apple iPhone was out of the gate. As fate would have it, future Motorola UIQ devices were already being developed with hybrid touch. While many were cancelled, certain concepts would be repurposed and converted into Android smartphones at a later date.