Dubai: Motorola is re-entering the brutal UAE smartphone market after an absence of two years and is being aggressive with a keenly priced Moto G handset.
“Consumers are very demanding nowadays and want customisation of their devices. Many of the consumers are not ready to spend $600 (Dh2,203) or more for a smartphone. This is where Motorola is concentrating,” Magnus Ahlqvist, corporate vice-president for Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific at Motorola Mobility, told Gulf News after launching the smartphone.
He said the big mission for Motorola and Google are to drive affordability and drive the growth of mobile Internet at much lower prices.
Google acquired Motorola Mobility in May 2012 for $12.5 billion.
The US firm, once a prominent player in the smartphone market, is struggling as Apple and Samsung have grabbed most of the market share.
He said the next 500 million people globally will buy devices below $200 price point.
“The Moto G will definitely put up a tough fit to likes to Huawei, ZTE and Alcatel in this market. While a lot of this is due to the quality of the Moto G itself, the Motorola brand is a premium brand in comparison to these brands,” Daniel Gleeson, mobile analyst at IHS Electronics and Media, said.
Performance wise, he said Moto G is almost certainly the best budget smartphone on the market at the moment.
The Moto G features the most up-to-date version of Android possible, as well as benefiting from Motorola’s solid build quality. Motorola also only makes minor customisations to Android, which again helps with performance on budget smartphones.
Moto G’s 8GB version retails at Dh899 while the 16 GB is priced at Dh999.
When asked whether the company will turn into profitable this year despite making an operating loss almost every quarter over the past five years, Ahlqvist said that it is difficult to make forward statements.
“The company has undergone a big transformation since Google acquired Motorola. Google also has helped us to bring a really strong focus on the business. We are definitely on the right track,” he said.
“We are in the beginning of a comeback into the market. This is the first step and we are in the beginning of long-term journey.”
Motorola is expected to sell 23.4 million smartphones this year compared to around 21 million units last year globally.
Its market share is expected to fall to 1.7 per cent in the face of huge smartphone growth in emerging markets compared to two per cent market share last year.
Despite some promising devices, Motorola continues to lose sales which inevitably will hinder any attempt for it to turn a profit, Gleeson said.
“Google is slow to give Motorola too much marketing spend however as it has to walk a tight rope with the other Android OEMs. In the end, the purpose for Motorola is not to turn a profit for Google. While it was initially purchased for its patents, the handset division purpose is to drive innovation across other Android OEMs, and be a last resort for Google’s smartphone strategy if Samsung and the other Android OEMs either switch to another OS or fork Android similar to Amazon’s Kindle OS,” he said.
