Google wants to take a big bite of the market share of Apple, with Moto G set to hit India come January 2014. While the official pricing has not been revealed yet, a Moto G in the U.S. without contract sells from $179 (Rs 11,272) for an 8GB variant and $199 (Rs 12,530) for a 16GB version. After tariffs and all, the affordable smartphone from Motorola will still most likely be much cheaper than the Apple iPhones in emerging markets such as India.
A research note released by Gartner on November 15 pointed out that Apple's newest handsets are just too pricey for buyers in emerging markets. For example, the 32GB iPhone 5c, which is supposed to the be the iPhone for budget-conscious buyers, sells for Rs.41,900 ($665) in India. The more premium iPhone 5s is priced between Rs.53,500 ($800) and Rs.71,500 ($1,135) for the 16GB to 64GB variants.
"In emerging markets, the iPhone 4S will continue to be the volume driver at the low end as the lack of subsidy in most markets leaves the iPhone 5c too highly priced to help drive further penetration," the research firm said.
"Gartner believes the price difference between the iPhone 5c and 5s is not enough in mature markets, where prices are skewed by operator subsidies, to drive users away from the top of the line model," it said.
The research also took note of the 23.2 percent jump in the sales of Apple for the third quarter of the year compared to the same period in 2012. This translates to 30.3 million units sold and could have been better, if there were not issues on the availability of the iPhone 5c and 5s.
The Moto G sports a quad-core Snapdragon 400 chip, 4.5-inch HD screen, and will come out of the box running on Android 4.3 Jellybean. The handset tips the scale at 5 ounces, heavier than the the Apple iPhone 5s.
The rollout of the Moto G aims to boost the sales of the company as the Moto X lags behind its competitions.
"Google's mission is to organize all the world's information and make it universally accessible. For Motorola, one of the things we're trying to do is create a very-high-quality mobile Internet experience over time for hundreds of millions of people," said Motorola Chief Executive Dennis Woodside in an interview.
While Google can sneak in a punch against Apple, re-entering the market of India will not be a walk in the park with expected resistance from other manufacturers such as Samsung with entry-level Galaxy Young selling even cheaper.
