By Stephen Schenck | February 28, 2011 4:59 PM
Motorola’s Atrix 4G may seem like a one-of-a-kind phone right now, with its unique laptop dock letting it perform double-duty as both a smartphone and a netbook-like computer appropriate for home use. An idea like the laptop dock is too cool to let it stay an Atrix exclusive, and it looks now like Motorola is making plans to include similar docking functionality in its upcoming higher-end smartphones.
Chairman and CEO Sanjay Jha has revealed that Motorola will be installing the Webtop app on the more powerful smartphones it has planned for release later this year. While he didn’t exactly come out and say that we’d be seeing more laptop dock action, Webtop is the app that lets the phone take advantage of the peripheral, making it pretty trivial to connect the dots.
The Motorola Bionic, for one, won’t come with Webtop installed, but a software upgrade may give the phone docking abilities in the future. Motorola also hasn’t revealed how it would intend to market future docks, but we’re optimistic that they’ll all use a standard connector that would allow docking with any compatible smartphone model. Hopefully, selling the same dock to owners of different phones will let the company bring the price down a little, making it less of a premium option, and more an affordable alternative to a stand-alone netbook.
