Motorola Announces New Moto E Budget Smartphone
Motorola Mobility is looking to duplicate its success with the Moto G by launching yet another budget smartphone called the Moto E. The move puts the company in direct competition with a slew of other processor manufacturers.
Building on Google Acquisition and Moto G Success
Last year Motorola launched the highly successful Moto G, which revolutionized the sub-$200 smartphone market. For less than $200 without a contract the Moto G offered functionality found in much more expensive competitors.
The Moto G success is most likely what led to Google's $2.9 billion acquisition of the company. The deal has generated a lot of hype and new stories during recent months but it hasn't furnished much in the form of products; that is until tomorrow, when the newly acquired Motorola Mobile unveil the Moto E in full at events in New Delhi and London.
According to representatives, the Moto E will be made affordable to all, and by "all" we assume this means that most tech consumers will be able to buy it without putting a dent in their wallets.
So What Are The Specs and Pricing?
The new Moto E will come equipped with a 4.3 inch screen, 5 megapixel camera, 4GB of internal storage, 1GB of RAM, and a dual-core processor - all for under $150 without a contract.
The phone will come loaded with Android 4.4 KitKat. Of course, the full list of official specs will be unveiled tomorrow in London.
Motorola Focusing on Cheaper Phones Along With Other Manufacturers
Motorola is just one of many manufacturers that are trying to make smartphones affordable to the general public.
Samsung recently stated that it will also be focusing more resources towards low-end phones and Microsoft recently acquired the Nokia Lumia line to begin focusing on creating affordable Windows Phones.
Even Firefox is planning to release a smartphone at the shockingly low price of $25 with the help of Spreadtrum (a third-party chip maker).
Manufacturers are starting to realize that the high-end device market is saturated because companies are in constant competition to make their devices as advanced as possible while forgetting about making them affordable.
The key to getting another billion consumers into the smartphone market is to make the devices so affordable that everyone can buy them.
Native Operating Systems vs. Web-based Platforms
Although the Android operating system is set to dominate the mobile OS market for years to come, there are interesting web-based alternatives popping up from companies like Firefox and Tizen.
One advantage that web OSes have over native OSes like Android and Windows Phone is that they use very little hardware resources because they function using web servers rather than the device's operating system.
In the future, as 3G and 4G connectivity expands, we could see some extremely cheap smartphones with minimalistic hardware specs running on web-based operating systems that handle most of the computing power via servers connected to the internet rather than natively on the device itself.
Waiting on the Moto E Release
The product specs will be unveiled tomorrow and fortunately we won't have to wait to find out when the official release date is because consumers will be able to purchase the Moto E tomorrow online from various retailers including FlipKart. The phone will be launching in India before it reaches the US and other markets.
In the meantime, consumers can compare the Moto E to Google's upcoming line of Android Silver phones, which are set to replace the Nexus line with a lineup of affordable high-end phones made by third-party manufacturers like Samsung and HTC.
