CES: Bicycle as decoration or function?

(Update: Motorola to sell a bike-powered cellphone battery charger. See below)

I'd say this is definitely a bicycle used as a decoration.

Motorola CEO Ed Zander rode this yellow comfort bike onto the stage for his keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on Monday.

Was it left over from Interbike in September? Maybe. The boss of the $35 billion electronics giant (2005) wanted to make the point that digital content is portable, even in countries that rely mostly on bicycle transportation.

That's a revelation?

An article at Red Herring goes on to say that Zander pointed to a mobile phone charger on the bike's handlebars. The device is geared to the Chinese market, he said, where there are 500 million cyclists.

(Update: January 9, 2007 — Textually.com, a cellphone blog, reported that Motorola is planning to sell the handlebar-mounted cellphone charger, which works off the bicycle wheel. It's ideal in emerging countries where traditional power sources are limited.

(Motorola must be considering that it needs new markets for its cellphones, as the Americas and Europe become saturated.)

Zander was hawking the MotoRizr Z6 during his keynote address on Monday. It's Motorola's music-playing slider phone. More about Zander's presentation at Motorola's website.

Photo from gigaomces at flickr.com.