Motorola abandons its Webtop accessory

When Motorola introduced the Webtop concept, as an add-on accessory with the original Atrix 4G, it did seem like an interesting and innovative new idea, which could could enable users to have the smartphone experience on a larger screen, while using a mouse and keyboard to navigate as you would on a normal computer.

While the outlook looked pretty positive at that point, adoption seems to have declined over a period of time, reaching a point where Motorola has decided to discontinue it. Moto has also confirmed that future devices that it releases would not carry WebTop.

Motorola’s official statement reads as follows

Motorola’s Webtop app helps users extend their smartphone experience to larger screens. While consumers around the world have adopted Webtop and the concept spurred a lot of innovation in the industry, the adoption has not been strong enough to justify continued resources being allocated to developing Webtop on future devices. We have also seen development of the Android operating system focus on the inclusion of more desktoplike features. Beginning with Photon Q and Droid Razr M/Droid Razr HD/Droid Razr Maxx HD, we will no longer be including Webtop on our products moving forward.

This decision did not really come as a major surprise, given the not so economical pricing for lapdocks, excellent options available on budget laptops/netbooks, and the advent of Android based tablets over the past year.

Do you think Moto could have tried out some other strategies to encourage and improve adoption of this proprietary technology? Hit the comment box below, and let us know your thoughts