Motorola Taps Texas to Make Moto X, First Smartphone Built in the U.S.
Out of the 130 million smartphones floating around the U.S., can you guess how many of them were assembled stateside? If you said anything higher than "zero," you guessed too many. There's not a single smartphone factory in the U.S., though Motorola is determined to change that and plans to open the first such facility in Fort Worth, Texas.
That will be the site where every Moto X smartphone sold the U.S. will be produced, Motorola's Dennis Woodside announced at the AllThingsD conference this week.
Image Source: Flickr (Serfs UP ! Roger Sayles)
"There were a few reasons why we decided to do this. There are several business advantages to having our Illinois and California-based designers and engineers much closer to our factory," Motorola explains. "For instance, we’ll be able to iterate on design much faster, create a leaner supply chain, respond much more quickly to purchasing trends and demands, and deliver devices to people here much more quickly. And as a part of Google we’re being encouraged to take big bets on things that make a difference."
According to various reports around the web, the manufacturing facility will create around 2,000 jobs in the area, hiring of which has already begun. While this will be the first smartphone plant in the U.S., there are facilities that make mobile devices, and in fact this particular spot was once used by Nokia for feature phones.
Confirmed details are light on the Moto X, though Woodside did reveal that it plans to broadly distribute its flagship smartphone across several wireless carriers. He also said it will have two processors inside.
That will be the site where every Moto X smartphone sold the U.S. will be produced, Motorola's Dennis Woodside announced at the AllThingsD conference this week.
Image Source: Flickr (Serfs UP ! Roger Sayles)
"There were a few reasons why we decided to do this. There are several business advantages to having our Illinois and California-based designers and engineers much closer to our factory," Motorola explains. "For instance, we’ll be able to iterate on design much faster, create a leaner supply chain, respond much more quickly to purchasing trends and demands, and deliver devices to people here much more quickly. And as a part of Google we’re being encouraged to take big bets on things that make a difference."
According to various reports around the web, the manufacturing facility will create around 2,000 jobs in the area, hiring of which has already begun. While this will be the first smartphone plant in the U.S., there are facilities that make mobile devices, and in fact this particular spot was once used by Nokia for feature phones.
Confirmed details are light on the Moto X, though Woodside did reveal that it plans to broadly distribute its flagship smartphone across several wireless carriers. He also said it will have two processors inside.
