Motorola’s Mid-Tier Moto G Line Tops 100 Million Units Sold

(Bloomberg) -- Motorola has sold more than 100 million of its mid-tier Moto G smartphones since the line launched in 2013, a milestone the company says affirms its recent turnaround.

The Moto G, 30 million of which have been sold over the past two years, is a “very stable franchise, and represents the majority of our sales right now,” Sergio Buniac, Motorola’s president, said in an interview. He said it represents about 40% of the company’s sales globally and half of all business in Europe. The company plans to launch new Moto G models every 10 months, he said, adding that the Lenovo Group Ltd. unit is shortening development cycles as part of its turnaround plan.

The disclosure comes before Motorola announces new devices in February and after the launch of the foldable Razr smartphone. Buniac said he believes the Razr “has the most affordable price in the category.” Its $1,500 price tag sits well below the $2,000-and-up asked by Samsung Electronics Co. and Huawei Technologies Co. for their respective foldables. The Razr will be getting some closer competition in the coming weeks, however, when Samsung is expected to reveal its smaller foldable phone with a design similar to Motorola’s.

The current Moto G sells for $300, making it far cheaper than most mass-consumer smartphones from Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Samsung or Apple Inc. That price differential appears to be Motorola’s calling card across the categories it competes in. Once one of the biggest names in mobile phones, the U.S. brand has fallen on hard times, having been taken over by Google for $12.5 billion in 2012 and then landing under Lenovo’s stewardship in 2014 for a price of under $3 billion.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Gurman in Los Angeles at mgurman1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net, Vlad Savov, Edwin Chan

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