Motorola planning a CES surprise?

Thursday 02 December

Does Motorola have something special up its sleeve?

Once well on its way to the tech graveyard, Motorola has become quite the kind of comebacks. After coming out of virtually nowhere last year with the excellent Milestone/Droid, now we hear the company is preparing to unveil a mystery gadget that will wirelessly stream video straight to mobile devices in the home.

The revelation came directly from company exec Daniel Moloney, who was speaking this week after the company split into two divisions to separately focus on the mobile market and the broadband sector.

After the company’s set-top box setup was bundled with the mobile division, Moloney confirmed that a device bringing the two businesses together was “one consumer proposition that will come sooner rather than later”.

Quite what the gadget will be called is a complete question mark at this point, but we do know that it will sling video straight to mobile phones and tablets in the home, and the service will be integrated into Motorola set-top boxes in due course (though whether we’ll see them in the UK remains another question yet to be answered).

Maloney also hinted that the device will be available through mobile providers rather than off the shelf, another hint that we might be in store for something a little bit different. And given his hint that we might be seeing the video-streaming gizmo before too long, what chance of it making a surprise appearance at the annual Las Vegas technology love-in known as CES early next month?