Motorola Rushes Patent Filing for Ugliest Smartwatch
When Apple introduced their iPhone in 2007, it was the beginning of the end for cell phone leaders of that day such as Motorola, Nokia and BlackBerry. In 2011 Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop warned his staff "we are standing on a burning platform," and announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft days later to compete with Apple's iOS and Android smartphones. BlackBerry is still in free fall and Google had to rescue Motorola. In October, The Verge posted a report titled "How long will Google keep burning money on Motorola?" Apple's iPhone changed the rules of what a smartphone was and the likes of Motorola couldn't turn their ship around quick enough to save the day as an independent company. Motorola under Google has to ensure they'll stay on top of new trends this time around and so they rushed a smartphone patent to the US Patent Office last year to do just that. But there's a saying in IT circles known as "garbage in garbage out." In this instance, the saying can easily be extended through to hardware and Motorola's vision for a smartwatch as you'll see in their patent graphic found in our report. Our cover graphic is just the beginning of this mess.
Motorola notes that their patent "FIG. 8 is an exemplary electronic device in the form of a wearable device. It shows a housing skin shown in phantom covering most of the components except the display would be exposed, according to one embodiment." I'm so glad they told me it was an exemplary device as I would have never guessed.
Our cover graphic illustrates Motorola's patent figs 6 and 7. Motorola notes that patent FIG. 6 is "a partial view of an exemplary electronic device with a flexible display, showing a plurality of segments of a flexible chassis module, each segment including edge structures configured to limit angular movement of the flexible chassis module, as shown in a flexed or curved position.
Motorola's patent FIG. 7 is a partial view of an exemplary electronic device with a flexible display, showing a plurality of segments of a flexible chassis module, each segment including edge structures configured to limit angular movement of the flexible chassis module, as shown in a flat position and a flexed position.
A new Gartner report published yesterday noted that wearable computing will be one of the hot topics at this year's CES 2014 that commences on January 7, 2014 in Las Vegas. Smart watches will be the most important of all.
If Motorola has any common sense left, they'll leave their hideous contraption noted in their latest published patent in a vault where no one can see it. And while patent graphics aren't design patents, their "rushed" looking patent graphic is hard to take seriously, unless of course, the project was concieved by their on-site kindergarten class. Then it would all make sense.
To review Motorola's patent filing for this … mess … click here.
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