Motorola comeback

Well surprise surprise, while Moto was busy planning its comeback in India, the Citi analysts decided to downgrade the company as they feel that the outlook for the company looks bleak with no great products lined up for the first half of 2011 after a strong 2010 second half. Looks like you cannot keep all parties happy :)

Moto says Hello to India again?

For Americans the Motorola brand will have a far greater emotional connect than for any Indian, simply for the fact that most of them had a Motorola device as their first first mobile device or during the rise of RAZR, they too were bowled over by its charm. While in India, Motorola claim to fame was fairly short-lived. It did march into India with a great fanfare and even managed to get a few things right but then shot back into the oblivion pretty soon and its place was soon replaced with Samsung and the other local brands, which were starting to mushroom. However, things seem to be changing really rapidly now though this American handset maker is not making too many ripples in the Indian market as of now but for anybody that’s following the device trend closely it’s action cannot be ignored.

Its romance with the Android and the success of Droid range continues to draw center stage even in India, despite the fact that most of these devices are currently not available here. One of the reasons, for the same is the experiments that Motorola is doing with the form factor through devices like BackFlip, FlipOut and now even Droid Pro (which has been even dubbed as Motorola’s BlackBerry). Only BackFlip and Milestone (GSM version of Droid) is currently being offered in the Indian market but from the looks of it seems that Motorola is now working on getting its act right and trying to launch devices in a more timely manner in the Indian market. So to be fair it’s just the matter of time and we may see all these interesting devices at the nearest mobile retail shop.

The only 'real' thing missing as of now is that unfortunately Motorola seems to be quite inactive in terms of making noise around these devices. Yes, the smartphone market in India is certainly not as big like the American market and it may not be prudent to deploy the mass media for these smartphones but then it's difficult of understand why the company is not even promoting its recently launched devices for the mass market. Motorola had recently started to offer a Dual SIM device and low cost Touchscreen, both which have been sweetly priced, and are indeddd a great ideas to make a comeback into this market. But it's difficult to understand the rationale behind being mum at this moment, when actually what's required is to try and be there ar the point of purchase and show all what you have got! Hopefully, the company will try and make some right noises around them during the festive season and also declare its comeback (in a manner its competitors now again start taking it in a serious way).

However, with the local and the Chinese brands slugging it on the price front, the going will be even more difficult but for a company that was almost written off and forgotten, this won’t be the hardest of the task. On a larger scale, what matters now is not how it plays in the entry level but how it plays with its armed Android line up and in that race too it’s pitted against the mighty Samsung and the thoughtful HTC. Yes, there are other wannabe smartphones around (read Spice, Videocon, Hauwei and the ones that will soon be out from Micromax and Karbon) but as now the focus area should be to not try and play on price with these wannabe but to play it on design, features and after sales with the bigger rivals and then move inwards.

Playing it on Celebrities

Taking on a brand ambassador to endorse their brand, is an age old marketing gimmick but usually it's the well established companies that adopt this move. However, in the handset industry it's the wannabes that are aggressively signing on known faces to pose with their devices.