With the release of the Moto G, Motorola has managed to shake up the mobile industry by offering a phone with excellent specs, running the latest version of Android, at a very low price. Barring Google’s Nexus line-up of devices, no company has ever managed to offer such an attractive price-to-performance ratio. Now, in a fascinating interview with Vodafone U.K, Motorola’s Vice President and General Manager for the UK & Ireland, Andrew Morley, has revealed the inside story about the Moto G. The first thing that Motorola realized while making the Moto G is that people who want to buy a smartphone for cheap only have two poor options — to buy a second hand phone or to buy a handset with compromises on the software or hardware side. The company, however, did not think in a similar manner and wanted to deliver a premium smartphone experience — without any compromises — to consumers on a budget. Motorola was also clear right from the beginning that it was “absolutely crucial” for the Moto G to run on the latest version of Android — as it allows for apps and services to work better. No wonder the company updated the handset to Android 4.4.2 KitKat soon after its release.
To provide quick and timely updates to its devices, the company also decided to use stock Android since it provides a “fabulous experience to start off with” and allows them to add new services or apps on top of it to make the device stand out.
“What we do is we run our devices on a vanilla version of Android, and on top of that we port a small number of high-impact applications. Vanilla Android is just a fabulous experience to start off with, but what we try to do is innovate with a small number new features.
The idea there is that when we want to upgrade Android, we’re not starting from scratch – we’ve got a core version of the software to build on. We think that’s the best balance – keeping the Android experience pure, but adding on just a few new services that add value to make the device stand out.”
Andrew also stated that Motorola’s acquisition by Lenovo does not change their strategy much and that it will continue “to focus on a few key products that solve real consumer problems.” Apart from the above, the interview also contains bits about how Motorola was impressed with Google’s focus on consumers and how customization is going to be a major focus area for it going forward. Definitely head over to Vodafone UK’s blog to read the whole interview.
