Motorola on Thursday unveiled a new smartphone that consumers
can personalize with a choice of colors and materials, hoping to
stand out in a crowded market and justify the $12.5 billion that
Google Inc paid for the ailing handset maker.
The highly anticipated "Moto X" marks the cellphone maker's first
flagship device since Google bought the company in 2012, and is its
latest attempt to break into a smartphone market dominated by
Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics.
The phone's customization options are a novel touch which may
appeal to fashionistas, analysts said. But some analysts questioned
whether the Moto X offers the kind of technological breakthroughs
that will vault Motorola back into the top rungs of the mobile
rankings.
"We would have expected magic from somebody like Google, and
this is not magic," Roger Entner, an analyst with Recon Analytics,
said.
"Motorola could have done this without Google equally well. Or for
that matter, another hardware manufacturer not owned by Google
could have made this phone," he said, citing the phone's average
hardware specifications.
The Moto X will go on sale in the United States at the end of August
or the beginning of September for a suggested retail price of
$199.99 to customers who sign a two-year contract at five of the
biggest U.S. mobile network operators.
Google faces a steep climb in its effort to revive Motorola, which
once claimed the No. 2 spot in the global phone market but
according to research firm Strategy Analytics now commands a
mere 2 percent market share. Shut out of the Apple-Samsung
battle, Motorola competes with other smaller players such as HTC,
Nokia and BlackBerry.
Motorola is betting that it can win over consumers by offering a
huge palette of colors to personalize their phones, as well as
unusual phone materials such as wood.

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