Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha announced during a fourth-quarter earnings call that Motorola is planning to offer “at least one” Android smartphone directly to consumers through Google, says an eWEEK report. The as-yet-unnamed device — to appear later this year — will be a follow-on to HTC's Nexus One, the first phone to carry the search giant's brand.

The eWEEK story by Michelle Maisto quotes Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha as having said during the company's fourth-quarter 2009 earnings call that it will launch "at least one direct-to-consumer device with Google" this year. The product release will apparently follow the model already used by the Google/HTC Nexus One, which is available unlocked for $530 or with a T-Mobile plan at $180. (The Android-based Nexus One followed Motorola's own such devices, the Verizon-sold Droid [below] and the T-Mobile-carried Cliq.)

Motorola's Droid

In all, Jha is said to have added, Motorola plans to launch at least 20 devices and to ship "between 11 million to 14 million smartphones over the course of the year, with smartphones accounting for over 50 percent of our total sales this year."

eWEEK's Maisto cites a new report from Strategy Analytics, stating that Motorola shipped 12 million total handsets during the fourth quarter of 2009 and 55.1 million for the year, and adding that its "inadequate 3G handset portfolio" made it lose out to rivals such as LG and Apple. However, analyst Neil Mawston is said to have written that Motorola has been cutting costs to restore its profitability, as well as raising the average selling prices of its handsets.

Mawston is quoted as adding, "Motorola is repositioning itself as a smartphone player, centered around the Android OS, and with its global smartphone market share almost doubling quarter-on-quarter to four percent [in the fourth quarter of 2009], the initiative has gotten off to a positive start."

The 2 million smartphones Motorola sold during the fourth quarter was "almost completely Android smartphone volume," Jha is quoted as having told financial analysts. He reportedly added that profitability for Android phones is meaningfully better than our traditional portfolio, our legacy portfolio."

Further information

To read Michelle Maisto's eWEEK report about Motorola's plans to pair with Google on a direct-to-consumer Android phone, see here.

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