Motorola interested in Windows Phone 7

By Derek Mead August 10, 2011

motorola-droid-3-front-screen-keyboard-open-hand-on — Image used with permission by copyright holder

It looks like Windows Phone 7 might have some suitors after all. Motorola has just announced that it might be keen to work out a deal with Microsoft to run its mobile OS.

The words came from the big man himself, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha, who was speaking at the Oppenheimer Technology & Communications Conference in Boston. While he said that “today’s focus is Android,” Jha sounded intrigued by the Windows platform.

“I think we’re completely open to the notion of Windows as a platform,” he said according to The Inquirer. “I would have to consider whether defocusing from Android to Windows will be the right thing for us to do, but if the capabilities on Windows are such that that is the right thing for us, I think we will consider it.”

In other words, while he thinks the potential for WP7 is there, he’s waiting for Microsoft to show some more concrete success. Jha is likely playing coy to see if Microsoft will offer Motorola a similar deal to the one it gave Nokia. In order to convince Nokia to use WP7 rather than Android, Microsoft offered several billion dollars along with marketing and R&D support.

Should Microsoft not put together a similar offer for Motorola, Jha has the flexibility to see how Nokia succeeds while already having opened the possibility of adding WP7 to his company’s stable.

Despite possibly opening Motorola up to another mobile OS, Jha also touched on his opinion that the market can’t handle the number of current operating systems avaiable. He stated that iOS and Android are the clear front-runners and their success is assured. On the other hand, he didn’t seem to have much confidence in the ability of WP7, webOS and BlackBerry to all survive.

Of those three, Motorola’s interest in WP7 has to lend the OS a fair bit of weight, especially as patent wars between Apple and Android producers keep raging. With that in mind, it’s possible Motorola is hedging its OS bets while waiting to see if Android can come out of court unscathed.

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