Telecom Lead @ GSMA MOBILE ASIA EXPO 2012: The Asian
market will be important to Motorola as the smartphone sector becomes
increasingly competitive in the region.
Asia Pacific in general is a very strong market
segment,” said Bin Shen, Motorola VP for international product management.
Motorola recently re-entered the Japanese market with the first 4G CDMA and
WiMAX smartphone and has made significant R&D investment in South Korea.
Motorola is trying to grow in Singapore, South East Asia,
etc as the growth in these regions is pretty high.
China is a particular focus for the company, where it has a very strong brand
awareness, after being the first vendor to launch an Android-powered handset
tailored to the Chinese market in 2009.
The popularity of Android in China means the recent US$12.5 billion acquisition
of Motorola by Google should be a good fit.
We continue to think China is a very exciting
opportunity in the smartphone area. China is an important country for Google as
well,” Shen added.
With many local OEMs making an impact as well as foreign companies, competition
has increased.
Competition is much heavier, certainly from two years
ago, so there are a lot of interesting dynamics. You can see some Chinese OEMs
creating smartphones but also there are some new entrants, like mobile internet
companies,” Shen told mobilebusinessbriefing.com.
Motorola’s commitment to China extends to working closely
with China Mobile in the use of TD-SCDMA 3G technology.
We are very supportive of TD-SCDMA – we were the first
company to introduce the Android TD-SCDMA smartphone back in January 2010 and
we continue to introduce our flagship smartphones in the TD-SCDMA area,” Shen
said.
Shen feels low-end smartphones will soon take market share from feature phones
in Asia, with the market seeing heavy competition in the next few years. Most
low-cost smartphones are being driven Asia, particularly China, and I think
that’s very distinct from the US market particularly,” he said.
Cheaper smartphones will bring social benefits, especially with Asia’s young
population and the greater importance of mobile internet.
I think that’s a very important social contribution that
the smartphone industry can deliver – I think that would drive a lot of growth
there,” he said.
