FT. WORTH, TX — Motorola will open a manufacturing facility here later this year and hire up to 2,000 workers to produce its new Moto X smartphone, the first to be assembled in the US.

Today at the AllThingsD conference, CEO Dennis Woodside revealed Motorola will design, engineer and assemble the Moto X in the US, with every unit sold in the US to be assembled in Fort Worth.

"There were a few reasons why we decided to do this," Motorola said. "There are several business advantages to having our Illinois and California-based designers and engineers much closer to our factory. For instance, we’ll be able to iterate on design much faster, create a leaner supply chain, respond much more quickly to purchasing trends and demands, and deliver devices to people here much more quickly. And as a part of Google we’re being encouraged to take big bets on things that make a difference."

Motorola will retain its global operations -- it assembles devices in China and Brazil -- and use Flextronics as its global manufacturing partner.

Hiring for the Fort Worth plant has begun. As reported by CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY in April, the site previously housed Q-Edge, a subsidiary of Foxconn, which moved there from Orange County, CA, in 2009. The site was also previously operated by Nokia.

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