Motorola Ditches Alexander Smartphone

This week has so far (it is only Tuesday) been full of ups and downs for those in the smartphone business. While Dell is rethinking design and AT&T is finding it hard to keep the lid on info about Apple’s fancy new iPhone, Motorola is busy dealing with its own problems.

Motorola’s hand in the mobile phone business has been turbulent in the last few years. It’s been a bumpy ride and, while not many have faith in Motorola these days, the company has been banking on the success of an Android device since Google launched its mobile OS.

Reports say that the company is canceling its Alexander smartphone which was first pictured last summer. Reported to be an 8 megapixel beast, the company no doubt hoped this new camera phone would put it back on the map or at least on the consumer’s radar. BGR reported the device would feature an Nvidia-sourced chipset for video and 3G graphics as well as an integrated GPS chip. Today Engadget reports (citing Digitimes) that Motorola has inexplicably "canceled the planned launch of the Alexander handset and also reduced the number of markets in which it will sell its A3100 smartphone." We can’t say we’re surprised. We didn’t see hide nor hair of the device at CES in Las Vegas (January) and it wasn’t at MWC in Barcelone in February.

Last week some reports said that Motorola planned on launching ten smartphones this year. While there’s little (okay nothing) to go on as to what kind of hardware we can expect (touch, QWERTY, camera, etc) there’s no mention of Android. In fact, we havent heard much on the Motorola Android front since reports that the company was building a 300 strong staff of Android devleopers.

Read more about Dell’s smartphone woes here and the iPhone here.