I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to find any indication of how the Moto G, the low-cost smartphone from Motorola is selling. I’m interested in how well their strategy, that is selling mid-spec smartphones at low-end prices by foregoing profits, is working. I strongly suspect that it is not, but I need data to verify that.
In the meantime, I found this funny article by Rolfe Winker for the Wall Street Journal. It describes very well the almost comical confusion and utter lack of coherent strategy at Google-Motorola. I’ve quoted some parts of it below.
The price cut on the Moto X extends a strategy laid out by Motorola Chief Executive Dennis Woodside to undercut rivals. Motorola’s lower-end Moto G phone, released in November, starts at $179 without a contract in the U.S., compared with $250 for a comparable Samsung device at Verizon. VZ -0.48%
OK. So the strategy is to undercut rivals on price.
Analysts say that low off-contract pricing is likely to have a bigger impact outside the U.S., where a larger share of smartphone users buy their phones directly, rather than by signing wireless contracts.
Now such a strategy will work best outside of the U.S. It won’t make much difference in the U.S.
The Moto X is sold only in North and South America, and the new lower price is only available in the U.S. for now.
Uh oh. But the lower price is only going to be available for the U.S.
Nice.
P.S.
In the last part of this article, there is a quote from an analyst;
Brand, distribution and product breadth are critical to sales volumes, and here Moto falls desperately behind [Samsung] still.
If this is true and I suspect that it is, we can also expect the sales of the Moto G to also be rather insignificant, adding to the long list of Google branded products that saw major hype, but failed to sell well.
Naofumi Kagami 