Hello, Moto: Newest Razr could compete with iPhone

SAN FRANCISCO — Motorola showed Tuesday that it has no intention of abandoning its iconic RAZR brand, even though the popular wireless phone has become a weight on the company's bottom line.

At a gathering in New York, the wireless-device maker lifted the wraps on a new, thinner RAZR that will hit the markets this summer — where it may compete against Apple's much-anticipated iPhone.

"The RAZR is not just a product — it's a brand," Chief Executive Ed Zander said at the gathering, which was broadcast over the Web. "This is a brand we'll continue to market for years to come."

That stance shows the company's loyalty to a product that has become one of the most popular wireless handsets on the market. By the end of this quarter, more than 100 million units will have shipped to date, Zander said.

But the RAZR has also featured prominently in the company's recent troubles. Motorola slashed prices on the device last year to keep up its market share. As a result, consumers ignored the company's higher-priced models such as the KRZR, which hurt its bottom line. And as the RAZR has become more ubiquitous, it has lost some of its appeal to more fashion-conscious consumers.

As a result, Motorola lost money in the first quarter, and its stock has slid more than 30 percent since peaking last fall.

The weakness brought a challenge from billionaire Carl Icahn, who waged a high-profile campaign for a board seat but was voted down by shareholders at the company's annual meeting last week.

The new RAZR — dubbed the RAZR 2 — plays on a similar design to the original, but has numerous improvements. Motorola slimmed the already-thin clamshell design by another 2 millimeters and eliminated the so-called "double chin" that sits near the microphone on the original.

The new phone also features two screens — a 2-inch screen on the outside of the handset and a slightly larger main screen on the inside that offers twice the resolution of the original.

The new model also comes with 2GB of memory for storing music and pictures, and it sports a new technology called CrystalTalk, which is designed to improve the clarity of calls in a noisy environment.

The device is set for a launch in July. Zander did not disclose a retail price for the product.

In another move, Motorola also launched an updated design of its Q smartphone. The Q9 version, which launches first in Italy this week before rolling out to the rest of Europe later this year, features a dual-processor setup that the company says can download a song file from the Internet in about 6 seconds.

In a demo at the meeting, the company compared the new Q9's download speed with the anticipated speed of the iPhone, which Apple will launch sometime next month. Motorola claims the new Q will be the fastest of any smartphone on the market.

"Speed matters," Jeremy Dale, Motorola's vice president for mobile-device marketing, said in the demo Tuesday.