LAS VEGAS: Motorola officials told TOI on the sidelines of Consumer Electronics Show that the company would launch Moto G, an affordable but fully-featured Android phone, in India "last week of this month". The availability of the device is likely to be immediate in some markets while in a few others it may take several days to reach.
While Motorola is not yet ready to divulge the exact price of the device before the launch, William Moss, director of corporate communication at Motorola Mobility, said "it is going to be price competitive... if you look at what the device offers, the kind of responsiveness and performance it has, Moto G will be competitive with its peers."
In the US the phone is officially priced at $179 and $199 for the unlocked versions.
Motorola has roped in a distribution partner for the Moto G launch in India. "Right now our plan is to announce Moto G in India with a partner in the last week of January," said Steve Sinclair, vice president of global marketing at Motorola Mobility.
Moto G, which was launched in the last months of 2013 in several markets, including Brazil, is a phone aimed at price-conscious buyers. According to Sinclair the device follows up on the philosophy of Google, which acquired Motorola Mobility in 2012.
"Google's mission is to connect as many people as possible to connect to internet... Motorola is a hardware manifestation of this goal. We want to build devices that connect millions of new users to internet and want to do it in a way that doesn't compromise quality of products and user experience," he said. "Moto G is for people who want a device like Galaxy S4 or iPhone or even Moto X but either they don't want to pay the high price for these devices or can't afford them."
Moto G is a phone with 4.5-inch screen that has a 720P resolution. It is powered by a middle-of-line quad-core processor running at 1.2GHz. The device comes with 8GB and 16GB storage and has 1GB RAM. The primary camera can shoot images in 5MP while the secondary camera is good for 1.3MP images. The phone is one of the few available Android devices that run KitKat 4.4.2, the latest version of the mobile OS.
The big draw for Moto G is its good performance, considering its supposedly low price, and availability of fast Android updates.
Sinclair said that one of the reasons why Motorola could promise regular updates was because Moto G was using basic version of the OS. "One of the reasons we can provide fast updates is because we start with basic Android in our phones. This gives us a lot of flexibility and lot ability to speed up updates. Not laying unnecessary stuff on top Android allows us to push updates faster. And that we believe it is of incredible value to consumers," he said. In comparison, most of the phones sold by Samsung, Sony, LG, Huawei, Gionee, Lenovo and others use heavily modified user interface on the top of Android.
After its acquisition by Google, Motorola is focussing on creating lower-priced handsets. "We are keeping the price of Moto G low because that is what we choose to do. We want to make money on these phones... we are not losing money. But we also want to deliver lots of value to consumers," said Sinclair. "In future consumers are going to be very discerning about what they are paying for a phone. It is hard to say if others are going to follow the similar low-price model but we will stick to our strategy."
Moss, meanwhile, acknowledged that India is a tough market, collectively dominated by local players like Micromax and Lava, which will be competing against Moto G.
Recently, Micromax co-founder Rahul Sharma told TOI that he wasn't worried about Moto G. Similar sentiments were shared by Lava director Vishal Sehgal.
"In the last few years, we have seen products from different companies come into the market and compete with our phones. But that has not changed our position in the market and has not affected our sales. Moto G is no threat to us," said Sharma.
Moss said Motorola is ready for the challenge. "I don't want to take for granted the strength of our brand in India right now. Moto G is going to be the first phone we will introduce in India in a while. We (will have) to reintroduce ourselves to consumers in India," he said. "The good news is that (after a brief break) we are ready to begin reasserting ourselves in the markets we have a history of being in."
Motorola used to sell phones in India earlier. It stopped selling phones here after Google acquired it in 2012.
source: times of india
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