Motorola, in a state of continual change for the last few years, says it’s going to ship a pretty wearable. We don’t know anything else about it — like what it might do. Or when it might ship. Or what it might cost. We just have a promise that it’ll look nice.
The device part of Moto, one of the great brands in technology since the first car radio, was sold to Google in 2011. Google, in turn, sold it off to the Chinese Lenovo in a transaction that is yet to close. (Lenovo already has its own line of mobile phones, as well as a robust notebook computer business under the old IBM Thinkpad brand name.)
At a news conference at Mobile World Congress, Rick Osterloh, Motorola’s senior VP or product management, complained that most of the wearables currently for sale are “extremely ugly,” and that Moto plans to treat its wearable product “like jewelry.”
We’ve always loved Motorola’s industrial design — the MobileTac and StarTac may have been the best cell phones ever made — and the customizability of the new Moto X has caught everyone’s attention. But “like jewelry”? From Motorola? How about: make something interesting and useful, too…