Motorola's and Microsoft's dirty little secrets

This iTunes mobile phone is not a iTunes mobile phone. That's what Ron Garriques, an executive vice president for Motorola, should have told delegates during his keynote yesterday at CES. But he didn't.

Motorola has signed a deal with Apple to bring the iTunes software to its mobile phones, allowing users to synchronize their the music on the phone with their computers. A demo of the phone was highly anticipated. The device is slated for release this year.

Instead of the real thing, Garriques demonstrated a mobile phone that had all the functionalities of an iTunes mobile phone, but in reality was a mock-up, build for the single purpose of the CES demo. The phone instead was a Motorola E398.

Motorola wasn't the only one displaying products that only seem to exist in the minds of revenue seeking executive who are all too eager to send out a press release.

As I strolled by the Microsoft booth, I asked the guys from the SPOT group to show me the new alarm clocks that Bill Gates talked about in his keynote on Wednesday. Turns out that there is not a single working model of the alarm clock to be found. The images Gates showed were really all but images, the work of some clever Photoshop artists.

SPOT is a technology that uses broadcast radio signals to transmit data. The technology was unveiled in November 2002, with the first SPOT watches hitting the market last year. A SPOT watch allows a consumer to get data such as news, stock quotes and the weather forecast on his wrist.

Prince Potemkin pulled the same stunt back in 1787, erecting fake villages to suggest wealth and progress when Catherina the Great came and visited the Crimea. This gave us the expression "Potemkin Villages". I hereby recommend that in technology from now on we call this a "Motorola Mock-Up".