Focussed on balanced and profitable growth in India: Motorola

Unfazed by the intense competition in India's smartphone market, Motorola says it is focussed on "balanced and profitable" growth here as it lines up newer devices.

Motorola, which is part of Chinese technology giant Lenovo Group, had re-entered the Indian market in 2014 in an exclusive partnership with e-commerce Flipkart. Since then, it has expanded its presence on other online as well as offline retail platforms.

"The Indian smartphone market has always been one been filled with fluctuations, we understand our challenges out there...while the market has been growing rapidly, we know of players who are using price as a tool or some players who have extremely over-invested in the market," Motorola Mobility India Prashanth Mani told PTI.

Motorola's fundamental thought process is "balanced and profitable growth", he added.

Mani, however, declined to divulge the company's revenue numbers.

Lenovo (and Motorola) was among the top five players in terms of shipment in the October-December 2017 quarter. In the fourth quarter of 2017, it had 5.6 per cent share of the total smartphone shipment. However, in the next two quarters it saw its market share falling amid intense competition from the likes of Xiaomi, Samsung, vivo and Oppo.

A total of 33.5 million smartphones were shipped in India during the April-June 2018 quarter with Xiaomi accounting for 29.7 per cent share, followed by Samsung (23.9 per cent), vivo (12.6 per cent), Oppo (7.6 per cent) and Transsion (5 per cent).

Mani said apart from lining up products that are designed keeping in mind customer requirements, the company is ramping up its presence in the offline market with Moto Hubs.

"Besides, we are also expanding strategic partnerships with companies like Google (for Power One) and finance companies...We have also recently ramped up capacity of local manufacturing to 12 million units," he said.

Motorola has partnered Google to launch Motorola 'One Power' that is powered by Google's Android One software experience. Priced at Rs 15,999, the smartphone features 6.2-inch display, 4GM RAM, 64GB internal memory (expandable up to 256GB), 16MP+5MP dual rear camera and 12MP front camera.

"As this is an Android One device, it will come with preinstalled Google apps like Google Lens and others," he said, adding that the device will get regular security updates as well.