Motorola Mobility is developing a free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones. With Project Ara, Google-owned Motorola wants to create a third-party developer ecosystem around a customizable framewook that gives users more choice in the components that make up their smartphones, according to Paul Eremenko of the Motorola Advanced Technology and Projects group, Project Ara Team in a blog post. The project has been in the works for over a year.