Motorola Vows Less Fragmentation in 2012, Debuts Two Smartphones at CES

Motorola plans to make fewer types of smartphone this year, but it may not get the okay from U.S. carriers who mmay prefer lots of variation on their shelves.

Motorola can use the opportunity to better market its existing devices rather than build campaigns for different phones with only minor changes, CEO Sanjay Jha told tech blog The Verge Wednesday. Jha also blamed carriers for Motorola's use of the Motoblur overlay that makes devices look different from an interface standpoint, even though they run the same software. Retailers like their Android phones to look different when their sitting on the shelves; that way it's easier for shoppers to tell them apart.

Verizon and AT&T don't want seven stock ICS [Ice Cream Sandwich] devices on their shelves ... The vast majority of the changes we make to the OS are to meet the requirements that carriers have, Jha told The Verge.

That means Motorola will have to convince telecoms they can sell just as many truly different but good devices as they can a bigger number of middling ones. In that vein, Motorola used the opportunity to unveil the Droid Razr Maxx and the Droid 4 smartphones. Droid 4, like its ancestors, has a slideout keyboard for super fast texting and typing. It also has a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, Droid Razr-like design (the cut-off corners), a full gigabyte of RAM and 4G LTE connectivity.

The Droid Maxx is really the Droid Razr with a huge battery. In fact, Motorola says it gives the device up to 21 hours of talk time, but until there are some hands on reviews, that is not proven.

Tell us in the comments if you think there are too many Android phones out there or if you think it's better to have more options.