Motorola unveils Google phone to muted response

Motorola unveiled on Thursday the first of many cellphones to be developed in partnership with Google, but analysts questioned if it could revive the once-dominant handset maker’s fortunes.

Wall Street sees the phones as Motorola's last big hope to regain the market share lost to rivals like Apple Inc, Nokia and Samsung.

Analysts were unimpressed by the design but hoped a focus on integrating social networking sites from Facebook to Twitter might help prop up sales.

Shares of Motorola rose around 1.5 per cent at $7.97, barely more than the rise in the overall market and off their earlier high of $8.15 before the phone was shown. In contrast, when Palm Inc unveiled the Pre phone at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, its stock rose 35 per cent.

Motorola's stock had risen over 10 per cent in the past month in anticipation of the new phone.

This is just the first salvo in the whole discussion about where they are going to place, but it sounds like they've done a good job here," said Ed Snyder, an analyst with Charter Equity Research. "It's nothing really to write home about from a physical aspect, but they don't really need to knock it out of the park to do much better."

The phone, which uses Google's Android software, has a slide-out mini-keyboard and a five megapixel camera.

The devices will be called Cliq in the United States, where it goes on sale at Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile USA in the fourth quarter, and branded Dext in the rest of the world. France Telecom's Orange plans to sell the phone in Britain and France; Telefonica in Spain; and America Movil in Latin America

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