We actually reported on this story yesterday, but it seems to have really picked up steam this morning and wanted to make sure you all saw it. During the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Tech Conference, Moto CEO Sanjay Jha tossed out a remark about 3rd party apps and the harm they are doing to phones. In fact, he mentioned that some 70% of Android phones that are returned are due in large part to the crappy apps that have been loaded on them which are causing performance issues. While I had initially assumed he was talking about sideloaded apps, I went back and listened to it again and he definitely blames it all on Android Market apps.
The scary thing here is that he went on to talk about how MotoBlur will eventually help users decide what they should be running on their phones. According to Jha, Blur knows how long your screen has been on, the usage of your battery, etc. The example he gave for the future was that Blur knows with “precision” what apps are killing off your battery the quickest and would be able to pop up a notification to warn you of just how poorly that app will perform. So basically, Motorola would have data showing which apps they believe to be made the poorest and would be able to remind you of that. We’ll try to ignore our thoughts on how developers will react to that statement. Yikes.
He also mentioned shortly after “what it is that we determine after interacting with you that you want” in regards to the intelligence of Blur which gives me the shivers. All I can say is that when a company claims it can help me decide what I want to do with my phone, that I’m tempted to run as fast as I can from them.
Your thoughts?