On Set-Tops and Smartphones

Taking a break from the 4G coverage for a moment, Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha made some interesting remarks at Mobile World Congress this week in an interview reported by the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Regarding plans for a new company made up of Motorola’s Home and Mobile Devices businesses, Jha referenced technology in the works making it possible to share features between set-tops and smartphones. From the WSJ article:

One of the first elements to be shared will be Motoblur, currently a feature on newer Motorola phones that combines address books with email and social-networking accounts. The company is testing Motoblur on TV boxes, where it will likely appear this year, though that could slip to 2011, Mr. Jha said in an interview.

You may remember that Motorola showed Motoblur on a set-top both at CES this year, and at SCTE last fall. Jha’s comments indicate that the demos may now be considered prelude to an actual product. Twitter on the TV is not unique, but integrating data from your set-top with social networking platforms in a more holistic way is something new. As I wrote back in November:

In the future you could forward a synopsis link to Twitter followers as you set a program to record, or post a widget on your Facebook page highlighting the TV shows on your schedule for the week. Once that information was embedded, you could riff off in a million directions. You could get and share: info on which friends are watching the same shows, news about related live events, updates on a series schedule, invitations to online contests and other activities, or even episode clips from the season so far.

Sanjay Jha also mentioned in the WSJ interview that set-tops and smartphones could eventually even share a common operating platform.

Interesting.