Yes, we’re crushing on the mobile market…unless your name is Motorola. As you might have heard, in 2009 Motorola will RAZR off (sorry, couldn’t resist) its money-hemorrhaging mobile devices group. From what I’ve been reading, Moto execs rode the RAZR’s success as a fashion accessory at the expense of furthering innovation.

Gizmodo published today a pretty pissed-off letter to Motorola CEO Greg Brown from Numair Faraz, former adviser to ex Motorola CMO Geoffrey Frost. The exact ins-and-outs of why the Motorola handset division failed isn’t within the purview of Speech Technology Magazine, however Faraz says something interesting towards the end of his missive:

Understand that the next big feature in handsets isn’t a camera or a music player — it is social connectedness; build expertise in this area, and sell it down the entire value chain.

This is consistent with what Nuance Mobile’s VP Mike Thompson told me: “The interesting expansion point is that not only are command and control of the device important, what’s emerging as a fast-growing trend is connectivity to the mobile internet…”

What role does voice have in all this? Well, you need the right applications to attain this sort of connectivity and, given the nature of mobility, it’s likely that those apps will require multimodal interfaces. GUI is a big limitation if you’re navigating rush-hour traffic. Speech rec, according to Daniel Hong in today’s news story, is essentially an “enabler” for these important mobile applications.