Motorola is flipping nostalgia to knock Google off the podium
Motorola Australia has a message for Google: We’re coming for your spot as the nation’s third most popular mobile phone brand.
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Motorola is looking to take Google’s place as the third most popular mobile phone brand in the country, targeting consumers on the lower-end of the mobile spectrum with cheaper devices and free accessories.
The business is modest enough to know it can’t shake Apple or Samsung from their positions as the top two handsets, but Motorola Australia and New Zealand mobile chief Kurt Bonnici believes the company has a real shot against Google.
Motorola recently became as the fourth most popular handset in Australia, according to research by IDC.
On the company’s plan to outdo Google, Mr Bonnici said it was already underway with the reintroduction of the Razr flip phone.
“In a flat smartphone market, the only category of growth is flip, and that’s what we will double down on,” Mr Bonnici told The Australian on the sidelines of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week.
“We’re really beginning to leverage what is probably one of the strongest sub-brands that’s existed in the mobile industry. Razr is synonymous, it’s a household name in the industry.”
Motorola reintroduced the Razr ($1599), one of the best known flip mobile phones in the industry in 2020, 15 years after the device made its debut.
Like most flip phones, it had its faults, and its earlier model fell behind Samsung among others.
The device’s 2022 model has picked up where the brand was lacking but there’s still a few bumps to iron out, including an obvious fold at the centre of the device when extended.
The device does have some advantages over competitors, including almost full functionality of mobile apps from the front screen when closed.
Chinese mobile phone manufacturer Oppo used the Barcelona conference to debut a new flip phone of its own, introducing the Find N2 Flip ($1499) which will be available in Australian for pre-order from March 2.
Mr Bonnici said new entrants in the flip phone space were proof of consumer demand.
“We’ve seen this week that there’s lots of competition coming in that flip space, but we believe we’ll be able to leverage Razr and engage in customer nostalgia,” he said.
Unlike Nokia, Oppo and TLC, Motorola didn’t introduce a new mobile at MWC, but the company did display new technology in partnership with OLED.
The device was a rolling mobile phone, capable of automatically extending its screen while a user watches a video, when the user needs to use a camera or when a keypad is needed.
Mr Bonnici said Motorola was aware consumers weren’t happy with the growing size of mobile phones and that rollable models could solve that problem by adjusting automatically.
“This is the future of mobile technology as we see it. We’re addressing some of the pain points consumers are having regarding the size of the product,” Mr Bonnici said.
The device at full length is 6.5 inches and compresses to 5 inches when features like a keyboard or the selfie camera are not needed.
Lenovo, Motorola’s parent company, displayed similar rollable technology in a laptop.
Motorola’s local mobile phone range includes the Razr as its premium product, as well as the Edge range which includes the Ultra ($1399), the Fusion ($899) and the Neo ($599) and a recently launched ThinkPhone in partnership with parent company Lenovo which targets enterprise users.
Mr Bonnici said consumers “weren’t necessarily going out and spending $1500 on their phone” and Motorola’s low-cost handsets offered “price points that Google doesn’t attract”.
The author was a guest of Verizon in Barcelona.
Originally published as Motorola is flipping nostalgia to knock Google off the podium
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