Motorola Inc. chairman Edward Zander said his company plans to make phones that would let parents monitor their children's whereabouts and censor obscene content.
Phones that assuage parents' concerns are also to be matched by features to attract young consumers, like next month's planned release of a phone with iTunes, Apple Computer's popular media player, said Zander, who is also the company's chief executive.
"Mobile phones today are more like television when I was a kid," Zander told reporters late Tuesday after visiting his company's software development centre in Bangalore, India. But "there is a way to keep it secure."
While parents need to adapt to the emerging youth culture surrounding mobile phones, adults are right to be concerned about what their kids are listening to, watching and reading, he said.
To meet those concerns, Motorola, based in Schaumburg, Illinois, is planning models that would inform parents of their children's whereabouts and carry censorship software, he said.
Motorola, the world's third largest mobile phone manufacturer, had worldwide revenues of $31.3 billion last year and employs 2,900 engineers in India.
Zander said the Indian engineers were working on security features, including access control and data protection. About 40 per cent of the software used in Motorola phones has been written in India.
