While I was at the European launch of Rokr, I took a few moments to chat with Greg Estell, a vice president of Motorola's European operation.
He was upbeat - as you would be too, if you were unleashing a phone that will most likely sell by the bucketload. But, I asked him, why has it been such a long time in coming? His response: it wasn't - but people just placed more expectations on it than a normal phone, which meant it seemed like a long time. "The anticipation was very high," he said "but Rokr had a typical gestation period for one of our phones."
One thing I'd noticed from talking to both Apple and Motorola was how they were keen to distance themselves from each other. Apple scooped the Rokr themselves by launching the iPod nano last week, and Greg even went as far as to announce that "this is not the iPhone". Why is that?
"It's just a clarification," he said. "Steve [Jobs] wouldn't refer to this as an iPhone, and neither would Edward Zander [Motorola chief]. "
"Our vision is not to have this device replace the iPod: eight hours of music does most people well - although if I'm on a long flight or something, I'd use my iPod instead - but on a daily basis. People carry their phones with them all the time."
And then we talked about usability. Motorola's had a pretty bad track record on making phones usable - a complaint that's been made by our readers many times over. What did he think about that? He admitted that the Moto interface wasn't always great. "Frankly, from a user interface point of view, we've made a lot of progress." But, he said, it was partly the fact that the firm always struggled in the face of Nokia's reputation, particularly on the Finnish firm's home ground. Even though he thought Moto had a good interface now, they were having a tough time letting people know. "That's my job: I've got to get that message through across Europe."
