Motorola will run full-page ads in major American newspapers on July 3 that hype the company’s much anticipated Moto X smartphone, rumored for a late summer release.
“The first smartphone designed, engineered, and assembled in the USA is coming,” reads the top of the advertisement. The Moto X will also be the first smartphone produced by Motorola since being taken over by Google in 2012. The ad is slated to run in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today – but it doesn’t show any images of the elusive handset or reveal any technical specifications.
Instead, the ad shows a man and woman jumping off of a dock, with the man’s arms and legs stretched out to form an “X” and the woman, with her arms above her head, resembles a “1.”
“Motorola is thought to be open to the X being the first in a series of phones, depending on how well the first device sells,” said Forbes.
The pictured dock may be symbolic of recent rumors that the Moto X may give users the option of a stock wooden casing.
Another rumor claimed that the Moto X would be available in 20 different colors. While not quite showing off 20 colors, the white Motorola “M” logo in the advertisement is surrounded by a ring bearing 12 colors.
“The first smartphone that you can design yourself. Because today you should have the freedom to design the things in your life to be as unique as you are.” These lines, also appearing on the ad, indicate that the Moto X will be fully customizable by consumers.
“Motorola’s focus on ‘makers’ isn’t entirely surprising,” according to All Things D. “In recent months, the company has dispatched a ‘Make-with-Moto’ truck to various [American] college campuses to show how people can use 3-D printers and other tools to build their own casings around the smartphone’s components.”
While the ad proves that users will be able to design their own device, it is unknown if the customizability will be strictly aesthetic. Perhaps consumers will be able to choose processors, memory, and pre-installed apps in the same fashion that we order full-fledged desktop and laptop computers.
“Smartphones are very different than other tech products a consumer owns,” stated Brian Wallace, Motorola’s vice president of global brand and product marketing, in an interview with AdAge. “They're closer to shoes or a watch. You carry it with you everywhere you go. Everyone sees what phone you're carrying and they judge you on it. Yet it's the one thing you carry that's the least customizable.”
The patriotic ad touts that “the world’s best design, engineering and manufacturing talent are located here in the USA,” justifying the choice to build the phone at a special plant in Fort Worth, Texas. The plant, which is said to be creating 2,000 local jobs, started hiring last May.
Mark Randall, Motorola’s senior vice president of supply chain and operations, said that the American plant will allow the phone to get to customers faster. “Our engineers are in Chicago and California they can come here. It’s much easier than going to Asia. They can iterate the product and make the product change to our customer’s needs,” Randall said to CBS’s Dallas Fort Worth affiliate.
