Motorola has invested in the cloud content-delivery service Catch Media and the move should help it increase its cloud services on its devices.
According to Motorola, Catch Media is an expert at technology which enables manufacturers and carriers to “offer their customers legal and convenient access to their digital content from disparate devices.” That
“Instant and easy access to music and video collections from any device, any place and at any time has become a necessity for consumers,” said Mony Hassid, managing director, Motorola Mobility Ventures, in a prepared statement. “Catch Media’s innovative B2B platform gives consumers the ubiquitous access they crave while compensating the content owners, content distributors and every other party that contributes to the ecosystem.”
When you combine the Catch Media investment with the acquisition of Zector and its ZumoDrive offerings, Motorola is positioning itself to be a strong provider of cloud services. Its MotoBlur service already offers some cloud-based storage and backup and it wouldn’t be too surprising to see Moto offers its own music and video services.
Offering your own services seem to be the major trend, particularly for companies which are making major bets on the somewhat commodity software that is Android. Motorola seems pretty committed to Android – it recently shot down the possibilities of using Windows Phone 7 – so it will need to be able to stand out with services that are unique to Motorola devices.
We’re seeing this from other handset makers like HTC, which brought out its Flyer tablet with an older version of Android so it could utilize its Sense UI. Additionally, the company has made a major investment in the OnLive service so it can eventually bring cloud-based gaming to its smartphones and tablets.
The investment in Catch Media is nice but we can’t really judge until we see the end product. Let’s hope Motorola doesn’t mess this up.
[Via Motorola]