Motorola Confirms US-Assembled Moto X For Summer Launch

Motorola has confirmed that its new Moto X flagship smartphone will launch this summer and will be the first smartphone to be assembled in the USA.

Speaking at the AllThingsD conference in California, Motorola Mobility CEO Dennis Woodhouse said that the Moto X represented a change in direction for the company’s product strategy, which will focus on smartphones and accessories but not tablets.

The Moto X will be designed and engineered in the US, with every device sold in the country assembled at a plant in Forth Worth, Texas.

Moto X launch soon

The company says that there are numerous advantages to such a strategy, since its Illinois and California-based engineers will be much closer to the factory, allowing them to respond to changing trends and demands and deliver devices to the market much faster.

“As part of Google we’re being encouraged to take big bets on things that make a difference,” said Motorola. “This is an incredibly exciting time to be in the mobile device industry. Our role in inventing the mobile phone is well known. We’re happy to be shaping its future as well.”

The Moto X is being touted as a potential successor to the Droid RAZR or RAZR M and parent company Google will hope that it gains traction with consumers, given that it paid £8 billion for the smartphone manufacturer last year.

Possible specs

Images of a handset claiming to be the Moto X were leaked onto the web last month, showing a 4.7-inch full touch screen device. It has been suggested that the phone will run Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and ship with 32GB of storage but no MicroSD card slot. It will be supported by 2GB of RAM, but there is no information regarding processor, although it is likely to be quad-core.

Few details about the handset have been officially confirmed, but Woodside has hinted that the Motorola X could feature a variety of battery-friendly ‘always-on’ sensors that were present in the MOTOACTIV watch.

The Moto X will be just one of a number of phones to be launched by Motorola this Autumn, but the company is stepping away from tablets, an area that it has previously invested in heavily, releasing devices like the Android-based Motorola Xoom.

Woodside explained that Motorola had shut down or postponed a number of products in the last few months but that it was essentially done with cost-cutting having reduced its workforce from around 20,000 a year ago to around 4,000 today.

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