San Francisco - Motorola’s Moto X smartphone was heading for Europe, the company said yesterday.
The flagship handset would arrive in France, Britain and Germany next month, the Google-owned firm announced.
“At Motorola our roots are deep in mobile hardware – we invented mobile communications,” Motorola Mobility UK general manager Andrew Morley said.
“Now, as a Google company, we’ve become the kind of company that can build a 4G smartphone like Moto X,” he said.
“It fuses our history of mobile innovation with the best of Google mobile services.”
UK prices would be £380 (R6 690) without a SIM card, or £25 a month on contract, Motorola said.
The price would be e429 (R6 280) in France. Moto X launched in the US last year.
A low-cost version of the smartphone, the Moto G, is already sold internationally.
Both devices are powered by Google’s Android software.
Motorola is pushing all the buttons to regain prominence in the smartphone market, including aggressive pricing, according to chief executive Dennis Woodside.
Since being acquired by Google, Motorola has introduced the flagship Moto X in the US and the Moto G.
“There will be different phones at different price points but we’re going to be very aggressive there,” Woodside said.
“When we priced Moto X at $399 [about R4 270] in the US as a promotion, we sold tens of thousands of units in a matter of eight minutes.”
The Moto X was first introduced at $599 unlocked, without a contract, while the Moto G was priced at $179 in the US.
Motorola, once among the cellphone leaders, has been struggling in recent years as Apple and Samsung grab most of the market share.
“This is a business where scale matters and it’s been really important for us to start putting products out there that we’re excited about and get consumers excited about. That’s what we’ve done with Moto X and Moto G,” he added.
Woodside declined to provide specific sales figures but maintained that since launching the Moto X and Moto G, “we are seeing our best days ever for smartphones”. –
Sapa-AFP