Andre Yoskowitz
17 Oct 2012 7:45
Motorola was asked why they don't ship stock Android with their new phones in the U.S., despite being owned by Google. The answer was not pretty.
Senior Vice President of product Rick Osterloh said the company would like to ship all new devices with stock Android, but the U.S.'s largest carrier, Verizon, won't have it.
Says Osterloh: "Going forward, we're going to try to be as close to the base as we can be, because we think that's the right thing for users. We think users also want fast upgrades and upgrades for their phones over the long haul, so we're going to be focus on that as well. It's a little bit different than what a lot of OEMs are doing and certainly what Motorola did in the past, but going forward that's going to be our strategy."
One good example is Motorola's new Razr HD. The OS is very close to stock Android, but it comes with some Verizon bloatware and a minor skin overlay. Because of this, the device ships with Android 4.0, not 4.1 Jelly Bean.
Although that is their strategy going forward to ship stock, the exec concedes Verizon and the carriers are still in charge (via Verge): "We are going to have to do some customization. Our partners sometimes want customizations. [...] Our interest is to make it as close to Android as possible and generally we negotiate somewhere in the middle."