With the Moto G, Motorola proved that a low price doesn’t necessarily mean you have to suffer a poor user experience, managing to fit in mid-range specs while pricing it close to the low-end offerings of the competition. According to Motorola, that was just the tip of the iceberg – in a chat with the folks over at TrustedReviews, CEO Dennis Woodside revealed that the company is looking at achieving price points as low as £30 ($50).
“In much of the world $179 is a lot of money so there’s a big market at a price point of less than $179,” said Woodside. “We’re going to look at that and just delivering on that value promise is super important. I mean why can’t these devices be $50? There’s no reason that can’t happen so we’re going to push that.”
Now, before you think “that’s cool, when can I get one of those?”, it’s best to keep in mind that creating a $50 smartphone would prove to be a rather difficult task, not to mention it would mean foregoing even the little profit Motorola makes off the Moto G (though with Google’s billions of cash backing them up, profit might not be a high priority for Motorola.) However, it’s a good indication of the company’s plans to aim for even lower price points while maintaining a better-than-average user experience, something which will be of huge importance as smartphone growth is poised to happen mostly in the budget and mid-range segments.
Of course, that doesn’t mean the Google-owned manufacturer won’t be focusing on the high-end market. Woodside revealed in the same interview that Motorola is looking at differentiating its high-end devices through customization, including giving consumers the option to select “screen size and functionality.” This isn’t exactly a nod towards Motorola’s Phoneblok project, which will go as far as allowing users to change like the processor and amount of RAM and has little chance of finding its way to the consumer market, but it suggests that different colors and choice of material will be joined by more customization options in the future.
Honestly, I can’t wait to see where Motorola goes with its future smartphones. If the Moto X and Moto G are anything go, I’m sure the company will impress us in ways other than just high and mighty hardware specifications, which is pretty much the (worn-out) road other manufacturers take in the epic struggle to woo customers.
What do you think?
