LAS VEGAS--Per second, there are four babies born worldwide--and a whopping 25 mobile phones sold, according to Motorola CEO Ed Zander. And that's just the beginning for mobile communication, he said.
Zander took the stage Monday for his keynote speech here at the Consumer Electronics Show on a bright yellow bicycle. Yes, he looked silly--and he knew it--but he did it to make a point about the prevalence of mobile phones globally, especially in countries where low-tech bicycles are the primary mode of transportation.
Soon, Motorola wants to make phone chargers to strap onto millions of owners' bikes in emerging nations because mobile phones are often the only type of phone they own. For many people in those countries, he said, a mobile phone is often the first interaction with a computer or the Internet.
Globally and locally, the theme of his speech was Motorola's mission to make everything mobile: communication, music, photos, Internet, television. And especially putting content wherever customers want it.
"This is the beginning of the decade where we get to control the Internet and control mobility," Zander said.
To that point, be brought up different guest speakers to show how Motorola is enabling that. Marco Boerries of Yahoo demonstrated Yahoo Go 2.0, a suite of mobile Internet applications that will be loaded on Motorola phones.
Mobile TV is a big story at CES this year, and Motorola threw its hat into the ring with Follow Me TV, a way to place-shift DVR content around the home.
Chris White from Motorola's multimedia experience department discussed what Zander called the two biggest customer frustrations: getting music onto a mobile phone and getting pictures off of it. Motorola has partnered with Microsoft to bring DRM technology to its phones. Users will be able to download music from a variety of online music stores into Windows Media Player. Songs can then be dragged, dropped and synched with the phone.
In regard to photos, Motorola's new Rizr Z6 phone will have a 2-megapixel camera whose pictures can be sent wirelessly over Bluetooth to a Kodak EasyShare printer.
Mobile communication, said Zander, "is coming down to cool experiences and simple things."
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