Reuters has posted an interesting piece on whether or not Android can save Motorola from its current woes.  For those living under a rock, Motorola’s cell phone sales have dropped by 50% in the past year, and the company is now thought by most to be the 5th largest handset manufacturer in the world.  We’ll have all have a better idea about that once Moto publishes its year end earnings report later today.

In the article, Reuters asks my friend Avi Greengart from Current Analysis for his opinion on the Moto situation.  When talking about how Motorola will have to differentiate itself when competing with a platform that is being used by other handset manufacturers like HTC and Samsung, Greengart says “That’s extraordinarily difficult.  Motorola has never shown it can innovate in software, ever”.

From my personal experience I also believe that to be the case.  For many years the Synergy platform’s user interface and sluggish performance was the downfall of many a fine piece of hardware from Moto.  Linux Java (JUIX) has also failed to thrive, being unable to support 3G data speeds on most hardware.

Something is going to need to fundementally change, it seems, if Motorola is going to be able to put out anything beyond decent hardware with plain vanilla Android implementations on it….

Anybody have their own thoughts on the matter?  Leave a comment!