Search-engine giant Google Inc is reportedly prepping a new urbane smartphone with Motorola codenamed 'X-phone', which poses a stiff challenge to Apple and Samsung's offerings, reports the Wall Street Journal.
According to the Journal, the engineers at Motorola are entrusted to work on a new smartphone, proposed for a release in 2013. Sources familiar with Google's latest move also told the WSJ that Motorola will continue to work on its DROID line up of smartphone, besides another project on an 'X tablet' following the launch of X Phone.
"Engineers at Motorola are hard at work on a sophisticated handset-known internally as the "X phone"-but the Google Inc. unit is running into some obstacles in its effort to provide more potent competition for Apple Inc., said sources familiar with the matter," reveals the Wall Street Journal.
The report further said that the engineers working on this latest project are being led by a former Google product manager Lor Ron, who is specialised in mapping. According to the report, Motorola is also looking forward for the expansion of X Phone with its recent acquisition of software developer, Viewdle.
The company is "investing in a team and a technology that will do something quite different than the current approaches," said Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside.
Reportedly Motorola has problems regarding the manufacturing of the next generation smartphone.
"But while Google is known for swift execution on the Web, its new hardware unit has run into obstacles associated with manufacturing and supply-chain management that have caused the company to rethink some initial plans for the X phone, these people added. Meanwhile, Google must manage complex relationships with smartphone makers that use its Android mobile-device software-particularly with Samsung Electronics Co., a Motorola rival that has become the No. 1 smartphone maker with Google's help," the Journal said.
