Motorola's Moto X phone to be made in the U.S.

Motorola says it will make the first smartphone manufactured in the United States
The Moto X will be produced at a 500,000-square-foot plant near Fort Worth, Texas
The phone is scheduled to hit the market by the end of the year




Rancho Palos Verdes, California (CNN) -- Motorola says it will produce the first smartphone manufactured in the United States.
Called Moto X, the phone will be assembled at a 500,000-square-foot plant near Fort Worth, Texas, that will employ about 2,000 people. The jority of smartphones today are manufactured in Asia.
The Moto X is scheduled to hit the market by the end of the year. It's the first new phone to be designed entirely under the ownership of Google, which bought Motorola Mobility last year.
Dennis Woodside, CEO of Motorola Mobility, announced the news Wednesday at the D11 tech conference being hosted by AllThingsD, the tech-news site.
The phone is packed with new features that can anticipate users' needs such as "when to fire up the camera," Woodside said. For example, sensors in the phone will let it know when it's being pulled out of someone's pocket, he said.
The phone will also adjust its settings if it's traveling at high speeds in a car, he said.
"The device will know, whether it's on or off, it's traveling at 60 miles per hour. It's going to act differently so you can interact with it safely," Woodside said.
The phone is "more contextually aware of what's going on around it. It allows you to interact with it in very different ways than you can with other devices," Woodside added. He did not show the device onstage during his talk, although he said he had it in his pocket.
Woodside hinted that the Moto X would go on sale this fall and be priced below competing phones such as the IPhone 5.
He said that 70% of the phone will be assembled at a Texas facility that once made Nokia phones, although some of its components will be built overseas.
Motorola's news follows similar announcements by Chinese computer maker Lenovo, which is building a manufacturing plant in North Carolina, and Apple, which has said it will begin manufacturing a Mac computer in the U.S. this year.
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