UPDATED 07:50 EDT / FEBRUARY 26 2014

Motorola announces Moto X2 and a smartwatch that ‘might’ actually look good

medium_11236439494A few questions have been raised as to why Lenovo acquired Motorola from Google. Sure Motorola’s an established brand with lots of potential, but Lenovo’s own mobile business is doing extremely well even without this acquisition.

Lenovo’s Q1 earnings call for this year revealed combined smartphone and tablet sales of 17.3 million, chiefly thanks to its strong 47 percent growth in the Asia Pacific region, plus similar good performances in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. So why was it so keen to snatch up Motorola?

“I think the Motorola brand has a lot of equity. After the deal closes, we’re going to do whatever that makes business sense. So if it makes sense for us to reintroduce the Motorola brands, you will see us do it. At the end of the day, Lenovo is all about making customers happy,” JD Howard, Lenovo’s vice president for mobile internet and digital home division, said.

Howard stated that Motorola will play a huge role in the run phase of its “crawl, walk, run strategy,” wherein it will re-infiltrate markets that Samsung and Apple currently dominate.

Though Lenovo has huge plans for Motorola, the firm is still a part of Google until the deal closes.

At the Mobile World Congress, Motorola announced that later this year it’ll be releasing the Moto X2 as well as a smartwatch that will “solve real user problems” and be something that consumers will actually want to wear.

The Moto X was of course, Google and Motorola’s first real combined offering. Described as an affordable yet higher-spec smartphone, the Moto X was a bit of a disappointment and failed to attract consumers’ attention despite its low price and customization features. But that hasn’t deterred Motorola just yet, and this time around, with the Moto X2, it’ll be targeting the mid-level price point as the company believes that $600-smartphones are a thing of the past.

There’s no details yet on what features the device may have to set it apart in the crowded mobile space. All we do know is that the device will still be running Android, even though Motorola has been acquired by Lenovo. The company stated that the Moto X2 will be release sometime in late summer of this year.

As for Motorola’s smartwatch, the company said that plan is for a wearable device that not only solves real user problems but will also look like jewelry – in other words, it’ll be something attractive that people might actually love wearing.

“Right now, there are no wearable products you actually want to wear, and it’s because they’re all extremely ugly,” Rick Osterloh, vice president of product at Motorola, said at MWC.

Aside from those comments, Motorola gave no details about what the actual smartwatch might look like or do, so we’ll just have to wait and see if it can live up to those claims.

photo credit: andsnleo via photopin cc

A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.

One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.  

Join our community on YouTube

Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.

“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

THANK YOU