There's no details of what Motorola might or might not have in mind although the chances are it'll be a scalable solution for all levels of user. Last year, Engadget as saying, "Owning your OS is important; provided you have an ecosystem, you have all the services and you have an ability and the scale to execute on keeping that OS at the leading edge".

It might be that the new staff are to work on Wophone, a intended to rival Apple iOS and Google Android. This features on handsets manufactured by Motorola (amongst others), and there could be an effort afoot to localize it for western users.

But introducing any new operating system would be a brave move in a market that's maturing and which is dominated by Apple iOS and Google's Android, especially bearing in mind that one-time main player Symbian is . Even Microsoft can't get much of a toe-hold, despite .

Just like with the desktop OS market in the late 80s and early 90s, the mobile phone operating system market is consolidating into two main players: Android and iOS. It's too early to call winners but the high prices and exclusive market positioning of Apple might mean it's set to nip at the heels of Google's Android OS which, licensed out to just about any manufacturer that wants it, will probably dominate. Again, this would mirror the state of the desktop OS market.

Whatever it has planned, Motorola would be foolish if it didn't build on top of Linux. It . There's a sophisticated, established and essentially free of charge toolchain to create the basics of a mobile Linux OS, and a lot of expertise available for hire.