Dubai: Motorola’s Middle East and Africa distributor, Redington Gulf, has shipped in 5,000 units of the US company’s flagship smartphone — Moto X — for its launch in the UAE.
The company re-entered the brutal market after an absence of two years with a keenly-priced Moto G handset in the UAE on January 20, 2014.
“Motorola is concentrating on consumers who are not ready to spend $700 or more for a smartphone because they are very demanding nowadays,” said Marcus Frost, Motorola Mobility’s senior marketing director for EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) and APAC (Asia Pacific).
Motorola’s mission is to drive affordability and drive the growth of mobile internet at much lower prices.
The 4.7-inch device is powered by a 1.7 GHz dual-core Qualcomm processor with 2GB of RAM and will be upgraded to the latest Android KitKat operating system. It also sports 10MP front-facing ClearPixel camera and 2MP rear camera.
The biggest advantage of Moto X is the always-on software features like flicking the wrist will automatically open the device’s camera, and just by talking to the phone even when the screen is off, users can have Google Now look up information and read it back to you. It runs on stock Android experience, which means no additional user interface on top of Android skin used by other manufacturers.
The Moto X’s AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) display packs a pixel density of 312 pixels per inch with a resolution of 1280×720 pixels.
“The company is launching specific products for specific markets and they are making a comeback into the smartphone arena,” Jim Mathew, vice-president of Redington Gulf — Telecom Division, told Gulf News.
He said the 4G LTE version will be available in the UAE for the launch for Dh1,599, but the 3G version will be available after three months.
The phone will be available across the retail outlets in the UAE starting May 21. After a gap of one week, the phone will be available in Saudi Arabia, followed by other Gulf markets from June 15.
“The initial shipment is small and expect to cater it for one or two weeks but we expect to optimise by the first week of June,” he said.
Moto X is the first handset after Google acquired Motorola Mobility in May 2012 for $12.5 billion. Lenovo later acquired Motorola from Google for $2.91 billion in a deal that’s still pending.
Motorola is building its success on Moto G and has launched last week its $129 smartphone – Moto E – especially for emerging markets.
Motorola aims to attain around five per cent market share of the Middle East smartphone industry by the end of the year.
“The Moto X will definitely put up a tough fight to Huawei, ZTE and Alcatel in this market. While a lot of this is due to the quality of the phone itself, the Motorola brand is a premium brand in comparison to these brands,” said Daniel Gleeson, mobile analyst at IHS Electronics and Media.
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 the two per cent market share last year.
