CES : Motorola CEO announces new phones, digital boxes

It's part of the company's plan to hook the developing world on mobile phones: sell them cheap handsets and solve their power problems with a recharger they can use while riding a bike to the market, or work.

"There are 500 million cyclists in China," he said, pointing out one of the company's target markets.

And he didn't stop there. After a strong introduction, Zander shifted into overdrive, announcing a slew of new products and several deals, including one to put new Yahoo Inc. Go for Mobile 2.0 mobile software on Motorola handsets.

It was a far cry from the Motorola seen last week, the one that saw its stock tumble nearly 8 percent after it announced fourth quarter sales wouldn't be as rosy as expected. The Schaumburg, Illinois, company said last Thursday that its fourth quarter sales will fall about US$200 million short of its previous guidance.

But on Monday, the company gave people something new to talk about, several new handset models, a new online music initiative, mobile e-mail service that syncs with Microsoft Outlook and new digital cable set-top boxes.

Zander's show opener implied one of the company's most important initiatives, targeting emerging markets. Motorola won the first GSM Association (Global System for Mobile communications) contest to supply a low-cost handset, under US$30, to emerging markets.

Developing markets put handset makers in a quandary. Companies have to sell handsets that cost less and have less frills such as cameras and music players on board. This is a problem because it hurts profits, a key reason for the decline in Motorola stock last week. But the sheer number of new users in such areas, and the prospect that they will buy more expensive handsets as time goes on makes emerging countries hard to pass up.

Today, 40 new mobile phone connections are added every minute, Zander said, including huge growth in India, at more than 6 million new users a month, and China, which is still average over 5 million new subscribers a month.

"We're now 2 billion subscribers out of a world population of 7 billion," he said. "It took us 20 years to reach the first billion. It took us three years to get the second billion, and it's only going to take us two years to get the third billion."

The bike-powered dynamo Zander showed off on stage Monday was one effort by Motorola to solve a major problem in poor countries: finding a place to recharge a mobile phone. The dynamo is being developed to work with the MotoFone F3, an ultra-low cost handset that is just 9 millimeters thick. The handset was announced earlier this year.