Motorola’s current malaise could be simply summed up by saying it couldn’t ever come up with a product to follow up its huge-selling RAZR. This is largely seen as a design problem, since the RAZR effectively started the thin trend that’s still prevalent today. Wall Street analysts and others think that Motorola simply hasn’t been able to come up with a handset that looks as good to consumers as the RAZR did a few years ago. That’s true, but it’s only half the problem, and ignores the RAZR’s horrific user interface.
That UI, which was used on Moto handsets for several years, made me feel more consistently stupid than any other manufacturer’s. I’ve seen plenty of bad UIs, but few of them live on as long as that godawful Motorola one. When the RAZR was hot, it didn’t really matter to fashion-seeking buyers. But the RAZR’s poor UI compounds Motorola’s inability to design a successful follow-up device, when it’s so bad that nearly 80% of RAZR owners say they wouldn’t buy another Motorola.
A study (with, admittedly, a small sample size) in the UK found that 87% of the Motorola owners it surveyed were first-time buyers of the brand. Of the first-time buyers, 85% wouldn’t buy another Moto device, while 78% overall said they’d go to another brand. Of those, nearly three-fourths cited poor usability as the main reason they’ll turn to one of the company’s rivals.
The company has released a new OS and user interface on some new devices, and Motorola says that users will find it much easier to use than previous ones, and is planning a big marketing campaign emphasizing the new device’s ease of use. But it looks like their shoddy software’s already turned off a generation of mobile users whose bad experience with a previous Moto device means they’ll never bother to check it out.
It’s wonderful to attract buyers to your products with great design; it’s a shame when the experience of using the pretty thing every day is so bad that it convinces people to never buy your products again.
You’re spot on - I was one of the first people to own a RAZR, and it was the first and only Motorloa phone I’ve owned. The reasons you’ve stated: that Motorola couldn’t follow up with a better-looking successor, and the UI of the RAZR was *terrible* (not to mention a lot of the functionality), are the precise reasons I’ve since had a number of other handsets, including two Samsungs (terrific design and usability) and a Nokia (terrific usability and functionality).
The RAZR was the first phone to wake me up to the importance of usability on a mobile device. Prior to my first RAZR, I had only ever owned premium Nokia handsets, which worked very well indeed.
When I got one of the first Version 1 RAZRs, I felt like the coolest kid on the block, as long as I didn’t actually do anything with it besides make and receive phone calls. The camera was sub-par, the memory was paltry, and the interface was clumsy. As more and more people bought RAZRs, and they became common, the cool factor rapidly diminished, and I realised that all I had was a slim, but pretty poor, phone.
Thanks for your insightful and accurate article on a very important issue in digital mobility.
I always enjoy reading your posts, and this one was of the usual excellent standard! 
THe best UIs do their job and you don’t even notice them.
I heard that somewhere, and the more I play with the N95 and Treo 680 side by side, I am coming close to agreeing on that. So many that I know have been fustrated with the UIs of several mobiles and mainly becuase they are not designed to be used or to answer the utility that is needed. Hopefully Moto and others can pick up the pace here (and give UI developers the freedom to do what they do best without committee-designship overhanging them).
[...] recent post at Mobhappy got me thinking about the old RAZR again. In the post Carlo relates Motorola’s current [...]
[...] this week’s Carnival entry, Carlo discusses Why Usability Matters on mobile devices, which may explain why the iPhone is doing so well compared to other smartphones [...]