Motorola Inc.'s much-awaited unveiling of the Cliq, no one talked about making a call.

Motorola Inc.'s much-awaited unveiling of the Cliq, no one talked about making a call.

Instead, Thursday's presentation by co-Chief Executive Sanjay Jha touted the device's ability to keep hyper-connected consumers tethered to their social networks while they're on the go.

The introduction of the Cliq as "the first phone with social skills" underscores the mobile phone industry's rapid evolutionary path. What started out as a way to make phone calls from anywhere has turned into a mobile computer, designed to manage reams of real-time information at consumers' fingertips.

Jha cited research from Gartner Inc. projecting that mobile social networking users worldwide will number 800 million by 2012, compared with 180 million in 2008.

"As consumers, our lives are spread across the Internet on different platforms, services and formats," Jha said at an industry event in San Francisco. "We use various ways to communicate with various audiences that we need to stay connected with."

The Cliq is the company's first phone in a lineup of devices powered by Google Inc.'s Android software. The gadget is important both for Motorola, which needs to regain its footing in the mobile-phone industry, and Google, whose Android platform is just getting off the ground.

Jha has been working on the portfolio since he joined Motorola last year in a bid to turn around the company's flagging mobile-phone sales. The technology giant hasn't produced a hit since the Razr in late 2004, leaving it far behind competitors such as Apple's iPhone and Research In Motion's BlackBerry.

Now, under Jha's leadership, the company is pinning its hopes not on a single phone, but on the Android operating system. Although Android is open to any manufacturer, Motorola has built its own technology on top of the platform.

Cliq is the first phone to use Motoblur, a service that Motorola also announced Thursday. Motoblur, which will be available on multiple phones next year, aggregates and organizes content from popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The company hopes Motoblur will set itself apart from its competitors.

Jha demonstrated how the Cliq's home screen displays a live stream of Facebook status updates, photo uploads and Twitter posts. Users can update their status on one site or all sites at once from the home screen. Motoblur also offers a universal inbox that collects all messages, whether through Facebook or multiple e-mail accounts.

Andy Castonguay, director of mobile devices research at the Yankee Group, said Motorola and other companies such as Palm are trying to solve a modern-day communications dilemma.

"If you want to contact a person, you have to decide whether that's a call, e-mail, text or (instant message)," Castonguay said. "Therefore, in order to get to that person, you have to navigate the application structure of the phone.

"It looks like Motorola is taking a nice step forward here … to really think about how people connect to each other, and removing some of the artificial nature of the application hierarchy."

Motorola is entering a crowded field as the critical holiday season, the busiest time for handset manufacturers, approaches. Earlier this week, Palm introduced a new smartphone for Sprint called the Pixi. T-Mobile recently announced the MyTouch, an Android phone by Taiwanese maker HTC.

Motorola also will be introducing a second Android phone for the holiday season.

Cole Brodman, T-Mobile's chief technology officer, said Thursday that the carrier will aggressively promote the Cliq into early 2010. He said the phone is ideal for "connected socializers," or thirty-somethings who favor smartphones and want to seamlessly blend their personal and professional lives.

"We expect (the Cliq) to be one of our hottest selling devices in the fourth quarter," Brodman said.

Jha said the integration of the Motoblur service into the phone will distinguish his offering from the iPhone, whose users flick through several screens of icons to find applications. Cliq's address book, for example, shows a person's Facebook profile photo and latest status update alongside contact information.

Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research, said Palm has a similar feature on its Pre smartphone.

"The days of a simple, static address book and static data are gone," he said. "For people who are tied into social networks and other live services, that's a foreign concept. The real information about the people you care about is live, and you want to see those changes in real time."

Neither Motorola nor T-Mobile provided a release date or pricing details for the Cliq.

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