Google Motorola is planning to sell cheaper phones after it failed to entice customers with their high-end smartphones. The company website said that the Moto G smartphone will be released in Nov. 13.
According to the Wall Street Journal, in the course of lower sales and markdown rate of its flagship high-end models, Google's Motorola unit has planned to market fairly cheaper phones.
On Monday, the price of Moto X under a two-year bond with a carrier in the U.S., which originally costs $200, slid down by 50 percent.
Particulars about the rumored cheaper Moto G phone was spilled out when a version of the said phone was shown on Amazon.com's U.K. website. However, specifications were still kept as a secret. In the website, the phone was priced at 160 Pounds, if under a contract, and 255 Pounds, if without a contract from any cellphone carrier.
Moto G phones will also be cheaper in the U.S.
According to Neil Mawston of Stategy Analytics, the price of the Moto G would be somewhere between the prices of the free-from-bond Samsung Galaxy S2 and Galaxy S3.
This marketing strategy seems to be a way for Google to juice some profit from the top smartphone makers, Samsung and Apple, and to overhaul the smartphone market.
During a conference in May, Dennis Woodside, chief executive of the Motorola unit, said that their unit can "attack" the smartphone market in a way Samsung and Apple cannot carry out.
"One of the areas that we think is really open for Motorola is building high-quality, low-cost devices," Woodside said at the time. "The price of a smartphone is $650? That's not gonna persist."
The said strategy can possibly hurt it business relationship with handset makers that use its Android operating system, especially Samsung.
Rajeev Chand, head of research at Rutberg & Co., an investment bank focused on the mobile industry, told the Wall Street Journal that the cheaper Moto G brings a "persistent and increasing tension" among Google and Samsung. He also said that the phone is up to tell Samsung that "Motorola with Google's support is a potential market disrupter."
