Thanks to MobileCrunch, we had an inside peek at what was going down today at Motorola/Verizon’s big press release. Provided below is a quick recap of what was reported at this big event, so let’s get started.
The BIG names for this event were as follows:
- Andy Rubin- Vice President of Engineering for Android
- Sanjay Jha- co- CEO of Motorola
- John Stratton- Executive Vice-President and Chief Marketing Officer for Verizon Wireless
- Shantanu Narayen- CEO of Adobe
- Special Guest: Eric Schmidt- CEO of Google Inc.
Starting off with a surprise guest Eric Scmidt, CEO of Google. Schmidt takes the stage and quickly states,“Why is everyone so obsessed with mobile? It’s because it’s a new and emergent technology, a new way of computing, that we haven’t seen before.” He later states“We are announcing One product, One amazing product.”
John Stratton goes over what applications will be preloaded onto this device, showing the device coming stock with Blockbuster (for renting/buying films), VCast video, NFL Mobile, Skype, and a Back-up assistant.
Sanjay Jha entered the stage and stated, “We’re going to deliver an unparalleled experience. This is our 11th smartphone, after we announced our first one just around a year ago.” Jha ,later on in his speech states, “What’s driving this is convergence: a convergence between the Internet, mobility, computing and media. This is something we’re delivering with this device. This is the largest opportunity in technology today.”
And now for the news Android as a whole have been waiting for, Andy Rubin says, “Everything that went into this, everyone who contributed.. from Motorola, to Google, to everyone in the OHA. Everyone came together in some way for this product.” He then says,”In May, we announced that there are 100,000 handsets every day. Today, that number is 160,000.” He later goes over the features of Froyo and then announced what every Android hacker has been waiting for,”That is being open-sourced today. Everyone can start hacking on it right now, and start making it even better.”
The Adobe CEO is really excited about this and the future of Adobe and smartphones everywhere that are capable of running it’s latest flash player 10.1. “We had to completely rewrite Flash Player 10.1 for mobile devices. We’ve announced that it’s shipping as of yesterday, and now it’s really about seeing what developers and consumers want on their devices.”
After their prepared remarks were over, they began announcing availability and pricing for the device.
- Droid X will ship July 15th
- $199 with $100 rebate
- $29.99 smartphone service fee for data
- $20 for hot-spot functionality feature
- The Droid X will ship with Android 2.1 but will get Android 2.2 later this summer
That about does it Ladies & Gentleman!
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