Bad news for all those who had been eagerly waiting to get their hands on the first Motorola Android-based phone, as its launch has been delayed. Reportedly, US markets would be deprived of Motorola’s Android-based phone at least till the second quarter of 2009. Europe’s wait will even continue for longer as there it will arrive in the Q3 of the next year. However, in a move to compensate, Motorola is going for a novelty twofer.

It seems that the major reason for delay is that engineers at Motorola are still working too hard to work on their own Android handsets. Earlier the debut of this phone based on the Google-backed Android software was 22nd October. It has been learnt that this set will have exclusive features like an iPhone-like touch screen, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and a host of social-network-friendly features.

Currently, Motorola is having a tough time, since its stocks are running near a 16-year low, and thus, there phone build on the highly sort after Android operating system is an effort on the part of the company on recover their losses.

According to the sources, “The phone will appear among a new class of social smartphones designed to make it easy for users to connect quickly and easily to mobile social networks such as Facebook and News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace.”

However, when the company was approached to comment, it declined but still informed through a statement, “We're excited about the innovation possibilities on Android and look forward to delivering great products in partnership with Google (GOOG) and the community of developers known as the Open Handset Alliance that are working on the Android operating system.”