Is Motorola dropping Windows Mobile for Android?

By Jacqueline Emigh | Published January 26, 2009, 7:25 PM

Last week, Motorola told the State of Florida that it's handing out 77 pink slips in Plantation, FL, only about a week after its mid-January announcement of 4,000 job layoffs company-wide. Motorola also intends to shut down all Windows Mobile development in Plantation. Earlier, a Motorola executive in Spain told European press that Motorola intended to tail down production on Symbian devices this year so as to focus on a new family of Android phones for the 2009 holiday season.

Even last year, Motorola had already announced plans to build some sort of Android device in 2009, although details remained hazy. With Motorola now in dire financial straits, and a still economically thriving Google readying a multitouch interface for Android, speculation is rampant that Motorola will now embrace Android as its only smartphone platform, to the exclusion of both Windows and Symbian.

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'dire financial straights' ??? get your facts straight!!! Motorola has over $4B USD of cash in the bank and aside from the mobile business Motorola operates two other business units (mobile radio stuff, and home & networks) that both continually produce healthy profits.....Motorola also holds a significant number of patents and IP.... Finally the new CEO Sanjay Jha who has recently taken over control of the mobile side has a strong strategy that will see Moto return to the top.....

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Symbian is a smartphone OS? I just learned my one thing for the day.

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