There seems to be a significant faction of people who think Moto’s Project Ara is dead before arrival. While some of their points are valid I think if Motorola plays it right, this could be the next big thing.
Project Ara is just the next step in Motorola’s focus to provide build to order custom phones for consumers. The Moto X was are first taste of that, and though we are still waiting for Moto Maker availability on all carriers the idea for the most part is solid.
Project Ara is just the next iteration of that, customize your phones down to the hardware in it. Do you know what industry boomed because of this? PCs. Right around 2003ish Dell came out with a method to build custom PC’s and ship to consumers within a short time frame. That idea is what made Dell the powerhouse it is in the PC hay day. Can you imagine not being able to customize the Ram, CPU, HD, or other parts in your PC now? No because it has become standard operating procedure for the PC industry.
Motorola, I believe, is trying to imprint the same method of custom PC’s into the mobile industry. So you buy a phone you decide on the camera sensor, RAM, CPU, display, and other specs that matter. If you think back, Motorola is already doing this with their X8 technology. Back when the Moto X came out the said they could uses any SoC with the X8 allowing for different future configurations.
Everyone keeps saying this is for tech geeks and people who want to build their own phones, which is a small market. I don’t think that is the case. This is for Motorola. Motorola wants to make themselves the Dell of the mobile industry. Where you buy the things you want in your phone based on your needs. Motorola could easily have 5 or so standard setups of the most common configurations. If you want to upgrade you can go to a Authorized dealer who will swap to modules out, and the old ones can be recycled there or sold on the market.
Yes there is the argument of standards, but why would the matter? Why would they need to mater? Size, will be the biggest roadblock, but I think with the years of knowledge Motorola has in phone manufacturing and where technology is today…this will not be as major as everyone thinks.
As tech enthusiast we are always bashing the Google’s, Apple’s, Samsung’s, etc of the industry for not bringing enough innovation, however when something comes around that is truly innovative in our sector and could change how we look at mobile…some criticize that too. Like is said it could be a success, which is entirely based on how it is implemented, but I believe Motorola has the brains…and the Google cash, to make something really major happen.
HeCareth, The Blog 