The Moto G offers great value for its low price, and that made it a great candidate for Motorola’s reentry into India, one of the most important smartphone markets at the moment, where local and big-name manufacturers are fighting it out to strengthen their hold on the budget market. Motorola had said during the Moto G’s launch that the phone would be headed to India in January, but it seems the company’s run into obstacles that have pushed the device’s launch into the next month.
Motorola announced today on its official Twitter account that “Moto G launch details for India will be announced on February 5,” which means the phone might not become available for purchase until late February. Furthermore, rumors suggest consumers will only be able to buy the device from online retailers (including the country’s largest retailer, Flipkart), as Motorola was unable to make a deal with distributors Ingram Micro and Redington, a reason for which could be the lack of any dedicated sales and service teams of the company in the country.
India will be getting the dual SIM variant of the Moto G, and one of the important questions in people’s minds is how much the Moto G will cost in the country. Google’s Nexus 5 costs approximately $150 (Rs. 9300) more than what it costs in the US and (parts of) Europe, and while no one expects the Moto G to have such a huge markup as Google’s latest Nexus flagship, how Motorola goes about pricing its heroic budget device will be what decides its fate in what is one of the priority markets for the company.
To recap its specifications, the Moto G sports a 4.5-inch 720p LCD display, 1.2GHz Snapdragon 400 quad-core CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 5-megapixel rear camera, 1.3-megapixel front shooter, 8 and 16GB storage options, a 2,070 mAh battery, and Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. It’s upgradeable to Android 4.4 KitKat, and will likely receive one more major Android update before Motorola decides its offered enough support for such a low-priced smartphone.
Moto G launch details for India will be announced on February 5. Stay tuned! pic.twitter.com/1UMLfFjhOW
— Motorola Mobility (@Motorola) January 22, 2014
