Sales of Motorola’s high-end smartphone, the Moto X,
have been slow. Now the company is targeting the low end of the market
with a less expensive phone, but with a major limitation — Motorola
won’t release the new phone in China, the biggest market for low-end
phones in the world.
The lower-priced phone, Moto G, was announced by the company on
Wednesday. It costs at least $180 without a contract, and Motorola
thinks it will appeal to people in places like Brazil, Chile and Peru, where there are more than 500 million potential customers.
Much of its appeal for those customers would be Google’s Internet
services that are embedded in the phone. But in China, the government
blocks some Google services, including Play, Google’s official online
store, making Motorola’s new smartphone far less smart there.
“Our ability to compete there is a bit constrained,” said Dennis
Woodside, Motorola’s chief executive, in an interview. “Moto G won’t be
offered in China, initially at least.”
Still, Motorola believes the phone will appeal to enough people outside
China to be a success. Unlike many cheap smartphones on the market, the
Moto G will have a big high-resolution screen and run the latest Android
software to support the latest apps on the market. It has a 4.5-inch
screen, which puts it right between the smaller iPhone 5S and the larger
Galaxy S4 from Samsung Electronics.
There are some trade-offs that come with making the phone less
expensive. The Moto G is bulkier than many popular smartphones —
weighing five ounces, it is more than an ounce heavier than an iPhone
5S, which costs $650 without a contract.
The Moto G also lacks a special feature that made Moto X, its
higher-priced sibling, stand out: the ability of the device to
continually listen for a user’s voice and quickly react to commands.
But the low-end smartphone’s goal is not to be a flashy piece of
gadgetry representing the latest innovation. It is an effort by Motorola
to return to growth by reaching as many people as possible, Mr.
Woodside said.
“Google’s mission is to organize all the world’s information and make it
universally accessible,” he said. “For Motorola, one of the things
we’re trying to do is create a very high-quality mobile Internet
experience over time for hundreds of millions of people.”
Smartphones have surpassed the traditional cellphone in sales in the
United States and some parts of Europe, and many manufacturers are
looking overseas for growth. While Apple and Samsung make most of the
profit in the worldwide smartphone market, the makers of cheaper phones —
including Huawei, Yulong and ZTE of China, and Micromax and Karbonn of
India — are selling well in emerging markets where high-end smartphones
are not popular.
However, like other American companies, Motorola will most likely face
tough competition overseas, where many manufacturers have been selling
low-end smartphones for years for less than the Moto G. Details about
the Moto G leaked online ahead of Motorola’s official announcement, and
some analysts who looked at the specifications did not find it very
compelling.
“It’s heavy, thick and it’s pretty expensive,” said Tero Kuittinen, an
analyst for Alekstra, a mobile trends research firm.
Source : NYTimes.com
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