Motorola makes strong bid to connect the unconnected

Singapore — In a show dedicated to all the latest and most advanced in the field of IT and communications, Motorola Inc. didn’t lose sight of the equal importance of having simple and basic devices for the mass market.

As Motorola showcased for the first time in Asia its latest portfolio of design phones, 3G phones and music and entertainment handsets, it also directed the spotlight to some of its new low-cost handsets for Asia’s emerging markets.

Over 100 million budget handsets are expected to be sold to emerging markets around the world by 2007. Motorola is quickly moving in to this market with ongoing programs that’s shaking up competition.

To date, Motorola’s most strategic project to tap the "unconnected" markets entails the delivery of six million low-cost Motorola handsets in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Turkey. This is under a contract with the GSM Association (GSMA), which chose Motorola among 17 other mobile makers, to be the supplier of the budget handsets.

GSMA is the operator-led trade association representing the global mobile telecommunications industry. It awarded the contract to Motorola last February in Cannes, France during the 3GSM Congress.

Motorola is expected to complete the project by September this year. The C114 and C117 are among Motorola’s budget handsets that can be sold below $40 per unit.

The GSMA believes that by directly addressing the cost of handset ownership issue, the industry can provide benefits of communication and trade opportunities to an entirely new set of users. The budget handset program proves critical to the social and economic development of many emerging markets. 

Quite surprisingly, the Philip-pines, with a 40 percent subs-cribed mobile phone market index, is still among the uncon-nected countries in Motorola’s list.

David Taylor, the company’s director of strategic operations for high growth markets, told The STAR that emerging coun-tries should have 50 percent market penetration to be considered connected.

This definition makes even India unconnected as it only registered so far a seven percent mobile service market penetration.

Taylor also cited Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Thailand as among the unconnected countries in Southeast Asia. Like the Philippines, these countries need about half of its population able to enjoy good quality service to at least make calls and send SMS.

"The other (high-tech) applications and features are not that important for this market," Taylor said.

Motorola believes the next billionth mobile customers will come from the populous places in India, China, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Market reports placed Motorola’s global market share for mobile device shipments last year at 1.7 percentage points higher than in 2003, while profits increased by over 11.6 percentage points. This makes Motorola the second largest mobile phone maker in the world.

The jury, however, is still out as to which can really claim to be the No. 2 manufacturer in terms of market share, especially since this has to be assessed based on different levels or segmentation.

Meanwhile, 60 percent of Motorola’s global output of 3G phones is manufactured in Singapore and the rest in Germany.

A total of four budget cellular phones – Motorola V360, V280, C117 and C157 – were launched during CommunicAsia2005.

The C117, which has been made available in the Philippines for months now, retails for as low as P1,990 with a Talk N’Text SIM card.

From concept to reality, new 3G handsets also made their big debut in this year’s exhibition from key manufacturers. Motorola launched the 3G V1150 handset in clamshell design with a two-megapixel camera, real-time two-way video calling, still and moving image capture and editing tool, supported by a sizable memory storage.

For the sophisticated market, Motorola unveiled during the show the PEBL V6, SLVR V8 and RAZR V3 Special Edition black handsets for the sophisticated market.

In addition, Motorola has something new to offer to users who go for rich multimedia mobile phones in the so-called "E398 hijacked by MTV" and E680i handsets.