Motorola was once one of the biggest cellphone manufacturers in the world, right next to Nokia at the time. Samsung wasn’t on the map basically. Then over the years smartphones came to play and Motorola lost its way, as did Nokia. Samsung left them all behind and now sells more devices than either of these companies, even both of them combined. Many would argue that Nokia should have gone the Android route instead of a WP one, considering many people think that’s what “ruined” the company, but who knows. As for Motorola, the company just lost its way. They fell out of smartphone map in many countries and that started to change in a way when Google acquired Motorola Mobility.
Let me elaborate on that real quick. Motorola didn’t strive under Google as far as sales numbers go, many would say that it’s one of the main reasons why Google sold Motorola to Lenovo for $2.9 billion in February this year after purchasing it in August 2011 for astonishing $12.5 billion. Others would say that Google bought the company for its patents and intended to sell it either way. We could argue all day why this happened though it’s not all that black and white considering Google did sell parts of that company after purchase (Motorola Home) and they did keep certain Motorola “special division” projects such as Project Ara and lots of patents, as mentioned above. The point is that Google altered Motorola’s smartphone business while the company was owned by them. Motorola really looked lost a few years ago and now they’re gaining momentum. They have a solid portfolio od smartphones and people are starting to recognize that. Moto X, G and E are all great devices and each of those is aimed at different consumer types. Moto X as Motorola’s flagship device which despite not having great specs offers great user experience and features. MotoG as a great smartphone for an extremely affordable price and Moto E as a really, really low budget device which still offers a relatively solid experience.
As I said, people are starting to recognize that and sales are going up. According to research by Canalyst, Motorola jumped over Nokia and became fourth largest smartphone brand in India. Motorola shipped 955,650 smartphones in the three-month period (ending with June) while Nokia shipped “only” 633,620 in that same period. We can compare this to Q1 2014 when Nokia shipped 583,160 smartphones compared to Motorola’s 379,310. You can see a huge difference here if you compare the 2 quarters. This means Motorola shipped 1.33 million devices this year in India compared to Nokia’s 1.21 million. It seems Motorola’s numbers are going seriously up, at least in India. They can of course thank Moto G and Moto E for that, which are really popular over there as far as sales go.
Do you think Motorola can keep the momentum in emerging markets and continue improving? Do you own a Motorola-made device by any chance?