If Motorola returns to tablets, it will be with customization

The Moto Maker helped Motorola remake a name for itself in the smartphone world with individually customized devices and now it may be hoping to do the same for tablets.

During an interview with Pocket-lint, Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside let slip that tablets are still very much in consideration by Motorola and the company hopes to offer customization as something other competing products don't.

"We are looking at tablets," Woodside told Pocket-lint. "A lot of people have asked us to build a tablet using Moto Maker, to customize their tablet. There might be a day we do that, but the bigger opportunity for us is the five billion people without smartphones."

The key take away here is that Motorola is hearing the demand and looking into developing a tablet version of the Moto Maker. But it isn't quite ready to let users slap on a wood siding to the next 10.1-inch Xoom 3 tablet or whatever comes next.

Jokingly, Woodside added, "... You need to focus. Or we could go next door and start building refrigerators too."

What can you Moto make

Thus far, the Google owned company's Moto Maker has allowed its customers to customize elements on the Moto X down to the accented color of the side buttons. In a similar personalization oriented product, Motorola introduced the Moto G with a variety of colorful back covers to choose from.

After releasing its last set of tablets, the Xoom 2 and XYBoard 10.1, more than two years ago, Motorola fell out of the tablet space. If Motorola ever gets back into the tablet world it seems likely that it will also come with some form of customization - at least on high-end devices.

• The inevitable follow up to Activity Trackers, a sleep tracking device.

Motorola locks down 3D printing partner in quest to build modular smartphones

Motorola's Project Ara dream to create a completely modular phone out of interchangeable modules is speeding towards becoming a reality.

The Google-owned phone company has announced it's partnering with 3D Systems, a manufacturer of 3D printers, to help turn its Ara concept into real-life handsets.

For a quick refresher, Project Ara aims to develop highly customizable, modular smartphones that users can modify to change its look and even upgrade its parts. Instead of buying a whole new phone, upgraders could just attach more RAM or a new camera onto the phone's mainframe, called an endoskeleton.

It might sound like a far flung idea but Motorola and 3D Systems teamed up with a multi-year development agreement to create a continuous high-speed 3D printing production platform to build modular smartphones.

Beating a similar drum to the customizability of the Moto X, 3D Systems CEO Avi Reichental said in a statement, "Project Ara was conceived to build a platform that empowers consumers all over the world with customization for a product made by and for the individual."

For real?

If 3D Systems is successful in building a manufacturing platform for Project Ara, it could start producing smartphone enclosures and modules as "Motorola's exclusive fulfillment partner."

3D printing might be the key to Motorola's plan of producing customizable and low-price smartphones like the Moto G.

The system actually working is a major big "if" that's still to be seen. Motorola revealed that there's been a team working on Project Ara for over a year already.

The Moto X maker has invited developers to start building their own modules in an effort to come up with an alpha version of the dev kit planned for a launch this winter.

The major problem of creating a modular phone is it means each phone component needs its own enclosure and a set of contact pins to connect with the endoskeleton. A modular phone might be upgradable for years to come, but all that added bulk could make even small-screened phone as hefty as the HTC One Max.

• Check out our review of Motorola's latest smartphone, the Moto G.