Motorola planning to extend MotoBLUR UI to multimedia

Motorola said it plans to expand its MotoBLUR user interface to multimedia content. Introduced last year in conjunction with Motorola's Android-powered Cliq smartphone, MotoBLUR manages and integrates communications tools spanning from email to social networking, syncing updates, posts, messages and photos from sources including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Gmail: "Our current release of MotoBLUR addresses the social networking segment of the market by providing users with dynamic pushed Internet content in a unique user interface," said Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha during the handset maker's Q4 earnings call Thursday. "With hundreds of thousands of activation already, we are able to better understand how to best serve our customers and evolve this suite of services."

According to Jha, Motorola will look to significantly broaden MotoBLUR's scope in the months ahead, "doing to multimedia what we did to social messaging by enabling users to share music, photos and other content in an interactive and dynamic way." In addition, Motorola will tailor MotoBLUR to the prosumer segment: "These are users who pay for their own devices and use it for both of their personal and work lives," Jha noted. "By expanding MotoBLUR to offer additional security and device management functionality, we will address the need of this part of the market."

Motorola reported net income of $142 million in the fourth quarter, a reversal of the $3.6 billion net loss the company posted in the year-ago quarter. Despite introducing the Cliq and the highly-touted Droid during the period, Motorola's handset sales declined to $1.8 billion, down 22 percent from $2.35 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008.

For more on MotoBLUR's expansion:
- read this Seeking Alpha earnings call transcript

For more on the Q4 earnings season:
- check out our complete coverage here

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