Our Staff First Thoughts on Motorola’s Moto G

Google seems like it wants to disrupt the very fabric of the smartphone continuum. Fresh off the Nexus 5 with it’s insanely good $349 price tag comes the Google owned Motorola unveiling the Moto G. The slightly smaller and underpowered sibling as the Moto X. So what makes the Moto G so important as the talking point? Price, plain and simple. For $179 you can get your hands on an 8GB smartphone running Android 4.3, a near stock Android experience, a 720p HD screen, 1.2GHz Quad-core Snapdragon 400, 5MP Rear shooter, 2070mAh battery and 1GB of RAM.

Getting back to the price. The $179 8GB model is off-contract and unlocked. Yes, off-contract. Need a little more giddiness in your life? How about the fact you can purchase a 16GB version for only $20 more-$199. That’s an insanely good price and Motorola has promised to deliver Android 4.4 KitKat by January 2014.

Here are a few of our staff’s first thoughts on the Moto G and the impact for the smartphone market. Be sure to leave a comment and let us know your thoughts.

D Smith: I don’t think it will have a huge impact. People are conditioned to spending 300 a month on a family plan and buying subsidized fruit phones for 200. I wish however it would. It is obscene the profit these wireless carriers are making and there should be a more competitive landscape and choices for customers. I think the Moto G is a very good device and people NEED to take notice of it. I am just not familiar with how the pay as you go plans will work and what will undoubtedly be massive price increases to the plans to make up any shortcomings the carriers will get because of not selling their traditional profit plans.

MartiM: I think that growth is going to be best in entry-level smartphones, and this is a smart move for Motorola. A no-contract, sub $200, good (and time will tell that part) entry-level smartphone for worldwide consumption (the US is not the be-all and end-all of the world) is still a niche that needs filling.
I like that it’s un-skinned, as well.

Me: Sadly I concur with Doug. Its not coming to the US until January. The US is also conditioned like he said to buy on contract.
Internationally we’ll have to see how much backing Motorola will put behind the device. Its a touchy thing because pushing this phone internationally means Google is making a play to snatch market share and profit from Samsung. Remember most companies are starting to emphasize the lower cost market internationally.
I think,it will end up backfiring on Motorola. Also from a business perspective they are stripping all the profit from the industry. A ton of OEMs will end up going belly up. Jobs lost will pile up..