Motorola will offer two Moto Mod teams funding to help launch their products

Motorola has been trying to encourage third-party developers to make unique Moto Mods for its lineup of Moto Z phones. This week, the company had 13 of those development teams present their device ideas to a panel of Motorola, Lenovo Capital, and Verizon executives. The final result was that two of those teams may get funding from Lenovo Capital to help launch their products.

One of the winning Moto Mod proposals was Digiframe, which is supposed to add a second e-paper screen to the back of a Moto Z phone to quickly show information like the weather, a person’s schedule, and more. Users can even stick the Digiframe to a refrigerator with its magnetic back to post notes to other people in the house.

The other winning Moto Mod idea was the MACAY TrueSound HiFi accessory, which came out of one of Motorola’s hackathon events in New York City. It will allow Moto Z phones to add higher end audio ports that are usually found in more expensive speakers so owners of those phones can have a much better listening experience on their headphones.

Both of these concepts could receive a share of $1 million in investment funding from Lenovo Capital, but that decision is not yet final as the group will still have to perform its due diligence before a final investment proposal is made to those teams.

The teams behind Digiframe and MACAY TrueSound HiFi have also been accepted into the new Moto Mods Accelerator Program. It will provide those teams with hands-on assistance from experienced engineering and design partners that might help them launch their Moto Mod ideas into real products that would eventually be sold by Verizon. Four other Moto Mod design teams have also been enrolled in the program. They include the previously announced Keyboard mod, which will add a physical keyboard to the Moto Z phones, and the Edge mod, which will add multi-LED notification lights around the phone.

The other two concepts that were accepted in the accelerator program are a wireless charging Moto Mod, and one that places a solar energy charging mod on the back of the Moto Z phones. It will be very interesting to see if one or more of these concepts will finally come to life as real products that can be purchased by current Moto Z owners.