The race to sell smart phones isn’t getting slower. It’s accelerating.
The evidence was seen last week in a U.S. newspaper ad from Google-owned Motorola Mobility which says its upcoming Moto X handset will allow buyers to design their own handset.
Mike Elgan of Computerworld U.S. believes this means Motorola will offer buyers a standard handset they can customize – colour, storage and other options.
(Motorola’s Razr HD LTE. Is this the old way to make a phone?)
Arguably, that’s what buyers can do now – there’s one model of the BlackBerry Z10 or Apple iPhone 5 or Samsung Galaxy S4 and you pick what you want – as long as what you want is either black or white, 16 GB or 32 GB of memory. If Elgan is right, Motorola will offer more options within a basic frame.
This contrasts with the way many handset makers sell phones: Users have a choice of many models with different screen sizes.
Whether Motorola’s strategy is revolutionary remains to be seen. Certainly as corporate BYOD strategies expand, buyers may well want the satisfaction of feeling they have a (somewhat) customized device.
On the other hand, so far buyers have shown a lot of brand loyalty.