What is Lenovo Moto doing wrong in India?

Motorola, a phone brand, well known to every Indian who knew what a mobile phone was, in the years when mobile phones had just come to India. Where is that brand now? Is it doing well in the Indian market? What is the possible future of the brand in India?

Motorola was missing from the Indian market for some years if you remember. It was in 2013 that Motorola came back in India as a sub-brand of Google. And what came along was a craze for Android among the Indian consumers. At first, Motorola had 3 launches, the Moto E, Moto G, and the premium Moto X. All three phones were priced very competitively and it took the market leaders by complete surprise. 

Motorola also offered silky smooth stock Android straight from Google and there were frequent and fast software updates as well. Moto G was a huge success in India. The legacy of the first 2 generations of the Moto G is still helping the sales of the current Moto G phones. 

Currently, we are in the 7th generation of the G line-up and over the years, the company has been making their offerings more and more senseless. However, the sales are still happening because of the loyalty of certain consumers towards the brand. So, where did this decline begin, and when will it end?

Well, here's the answer. 

In 2015, Google sold the brand to Lenovo. One thing worth noting is that Google had bought moto not for manufacturing, but for its patents. Google sole aim was to get its Android OS on maximum phones possible and hence, it bought Motorola, who had a massive patent library which could have harmed Google's OS in the future. For acquiring those patents, Google paid $12.5 billion. 

However, Google wanted to get out of the mobile manufacturing business, and hence it sold Motorola to Lenovo for just 2.91 Billion dollars in 2015. This was only after making Motorola a leading Android smartphone producing brand.

Lenovo is one of the top 5 smartphone producing brands in the World. However, it's market share in the USA was zero. As for Motorola, the brand as an 85-year-old history in the United States of America. After buying Motorola, Lenovo had a considerable market share in all the leading smartphone markets across the World.

However, Motorola changed in India after going under Lenovo. Post-2015, the design language of Moto changed, from the funky curved backs to flat ones, which was not liked by many. Also, the software updates came in much slower now. One major point here is that the Lenovo branded phones were not enjoying much success post the Lenovo K4 note. So, Lenovo made Moto it's primary offering for India. 

In this process, Lenovo started flooding the markets with Moto phones. In 2016, Motorola had around 15 launches, and that too around almost the same segment, making it very confusing for the buyers. 

Also, the higher end models of Motorola, which are launched in the US or the UK, don't see the light of the day in India. The launches too are very much delayed in India, leaving the company way behind the competition. 

 Moto had received much criticism when they had declined their previously promised Android 8.0 Oreo update on one of their highest selling handsets, the Moto G4 plus.

The pricing of Moto is way beyond anyone's understanding of whatever they offer. 

All in all, Motorola, once the best budget brands, seems to be very confused with the kind of offering they should be providing the Indian consumers. 

What should Motorola start doing to get a hold of the market?

1. Moto should stop flooding the market with so many offerings. Rather, Lenovo should learn from the Moto that was under Google and concentrate on lesser but more appealing products.

2. Moto must understand that soon, consumer loyalty is going to decrease. In fact, it has already started to decline, with another promising brand like Nokia coming in with stock Android smartphones, and all that Motorola offered under Google.

3. The brand needs to price its products sensibly. They need to keep an eye on the competition and realize that brands like Mi, Realme, Asus, and now even Samsung are offering phones at a price of 10k which Moto offers at around 15 or 16k.

4. Marketing of the products is gone down to almost zero. In the last one year, the consumers are not even aware of when a Motorola phone was launched in the market. This is also hampering their customer base.

5. The last and most important thing that Moto needs to do and do well to bring its products to India quicker than they do. They can't just neglect India as some secondary market and forget that it is soon going to be the largest smartphone market in the World. Also, they need to push in updates sooner than they do. Timely updates were one of the USPs of this brand at some point in time. With Motorola still using stock Android interface on their phones, it won't be so difficult for them to push-in updates for their phones on time and maybe before any other brand.

If anyone from Motorola is reading this blog, this is a fan of Motorola who has used 2 of the most successful phones from the brand in the past 4 years and recommended them to others as well. Please mend the things that you are doing wrong in India, and Motorola will be one of the biggest and best-selling brands in the Indian market once again. ☮