Motorola
We recently got the opportunity to conduct an engaging interview with Shivam Ranjan, the Head of Marketing at Motorola – Asia Pacific. Ranjan shared his insights on the transformative role of artificial intelligence (AI) in consumer technology, leveraging partnerships such as Pantone and Bose in its smartphone and audio products, and fixing issues associated with past Motorola products. He explains the company’s strategic initiatives to stay ahead in the competitive market and discusses the broader implications of AI advancements for consumers. Additionally, the interview covers future plans for Motorola and their quest to gain momentum in the offline market. By unpacking these themes, we gain a deeper understanding of how Motorola is navigating this dynamic field. Let’s delve right into it.
Shivam: Let me take a step back before I answer your question to talk about the vision and, the strategy behind doing this. As you know, Motorola has been growing fast, globally and in India, and we have seen tremendous growth in our smartphone portfolio. So if you look at our smartphone portfolio, we are present in premium, flagship and budget segments. So, we’re catering to different product segments and giving them a very, very comprehensive and, innovative, smartphone experience. But I think it is also important along with, smartphones, to have, an ecosystem of products. Specifically, when you talk about audio, I think that’s become something that’s become synonymous, along with the phone. Because people are consuming content on their smartphones all the time. Hence we wanted to enter this category because I think it made sense from a lot of perspectives to give our consumers the choice.
But as an industry, the audio space is already cluttered. You’ve got two kinds of players in the industry, one who are smartphone OEMs and the other is a set of brands that operate only in audio products. So there are both kinds of products. Since we are entering this category after a while, it’s important for us to also have the learnings of the industry in terms of what makes for good sound, what are the certifications, etc. So, I think our approach has always been to believe in partnerships, to leverage partnerships and to collaborate with partners with those who are experts in their respective fields. So, if you look at our smartphone portfolio today, it’s known for its designs, it’s known for brilliant colours. And that comes from our partnership with Pantone, who is a global leader in colour science. Now, in the audio space, the biggest thing is we partnered with Bose and our collaboration with Bose started last year. So, it began with the fact that our Razer products, in some markets, came bundled with Bose headsets in some markets outside of India. But we decided to leverage that partnership and took it to the next level where we’ve worked with them to design the Moto Buds+ end to end.
So, Bose has partnered with us to give their inputs in terms of design, in terms of sound quality, in terms of tuning, in terms of equalisation, in terms of all the learnings that they have from their consumers and their expertise on sound quality. So that is something that has given us a massive edge. And Moto Buds+ actually comes with a certification which says “Sound by Bose” and Bose only gives that certification if it believes that the sound is equivalent to a Bose headset. The Buds+ also come with a lot of other features which are top-notch in the segment.
The same learnings that we’ve got from the co-development of the Buds Plus helped us design Moto Buds, which comes at a far more accessible price point, and it was important for us to give two options to our consumers because our smartphone portfolio is also so broad. So we’ve got flagship consumers who might go for the Buds Plus for the ultimate sound experience. But you’ve also got the Moto G users who are in the mid-segment and are looking for a great sound experience, but at a more accessible price point. So that’s how we’ve gone with the strategy on the Buds.
Shivam: Our partnership with Bose is at multiple levels. Bose is not creating the product, but Bose is helping us with their consumer insights, their expertise, and their knowledge. Right from what drivers we should use to the equalisation and how the sound wave should be. They advised us on how to balance the EQ to ensure that you have the optimal amounts of bass and the optimal amounts of treble. Even for Active Noise Cancellation, we leverage their insights. Our Buds Plus actually has four levels of ANC where one is a transparency mode, one is an adaptive mode, and so on. So, we’ve taken deep insights into that.
Secondly, we’ve also got the advantage of getting our Buds tested within Bose Labs to get the “Sound by Bose” certification. Bose definitely wanted to do the testing in their own labs to be able to give us that certification. Even when it comes to the design and the ergonomics, we’ve tried to leverage the learnings which Bose has. And of course, there is co-branding, right? This means that there is a co-branding, agreement that we have where both brands will talk about each other and communicate about each other to promote both brands.
Shivam: It’s a very good point. So, we definitely had a lot of insights from Indian consumers that Indian consumers love bass. So we stuck to Bose’s guidelines for the most part in terms of the sound signature and equalisation metrics. But we also gave inputs to tweak it slightly for the Indian market to ensure we addressed their sound needs. If you hear the sound from the Buds+ and the Buds, you will see a difference. The Buds actually has more bass because that’s something that we’ve optimised further. But because Buds Plus was in collaboration with Bose, we tried to stay within the guidelines and see what best we could optimise to ensure that while we address the Indian audience’s demands, we still have some of the Bose essence.
Shivam: It’s difficult for us to comment on our future portfolio, but I think it’s important for us to have products that complement our smartphone portfolio and specifically things that are required. As of now, we believe the industry is moving towards wireless. However, depending on the requirements and the needs of our consumers, we are absolutely open to providing them with anything and everything that we feel becomes important from an ecosystem perspective.
Shivam: If you look at the IDC report for Q1 2024, you will see that Motorola has doubled its market share in India and is growing at 110%. So, it is the fastest-growing smartphone brand in India. And it is, of course, moving towards the ambition that we have of becoming the number three player over the next couple of years. So, I think we are well and truly on track to achieve those numbers. We have done a lot of things in our products to differentiate ourselves and to capture the market share. The key point is definitely our design, colours and material choice, which has led to consumers seeing Motorola phones as really premium, aspirational and something that they love to hold, use and even flaunt.
Then, we’ve also differentiated ourselves with our software experiences, which is not just the Hello UI that you see now on our products, but also Moto Gestures, Moto Secure, Family Spaces, Ready For, and Moto Connect. We’ve tried to create that convenience and ease of use for our consumers to be able to interact and operate with multiple devices all around them, and also get a fabulous software experience on the devices. I think it’s also very important for us to provide our consumers with great features at a great time to market. In the sense that we are often the first to give those features to consumers and also bring a perfect combination of premium features to consumers at a particular price point.
And of course, we also focus on our 5G capability which has been a hallmark of our success. We’ve been known as India’s best 5G smartphone brand for quite a few years. And the reason is we never compromise on that. We provide more than 14-15 bands on our devices across the board. But these are all things that we’ve done in the past, right?
Like you said, what is Motorola going to be focusing on now to get further market share for us? I think one of the biggest pillars that I would like to highlight is that we are moving towards AI in a big way. And the reason for that is because we truly believe that AI will play a crucial role in every aspect, in every sphere of a consumer’s life. Hence it is extremely important for us to ensure that we are predominantly present in the AI space and we are featuring it prominently on our phones. The Edge 50 Pro, which we launched recently, was our effort to get AI not just at flagship price points like some of the brands are providing currently, but also at accessible price points. We brought it down at a ₹30,000 to ₹35,000 price point with the Edge 50 Pro where consumers could use AI features in the cameras as well as generative AI features like Sync Style and more.
The second big thing that we are focusing on is to give consumers an extraordinary camera experience. And, again, the Motorola Edge 50 Pro is another example of that. We’ve seen real proof of the pudding in the fact that our Flipkart Ratings have grown from the Edge 40 series to the Edge 50 series consistently. So the Edge 50 Pro today is one of the highest-rated camera smartphones on Flipkart, which is something that we are very proud of. And it shows our commitment to the Indian market. It shows how we are focusing here.
Last but not least, to answer your question concerning the channel strategy. So I think when you look at the channel strategy, India is a market which is almost evenly split between online and offline today. If a brand has to become a number three brand, which is what our ambition is, it is also important to have a presence in both channels, right? Because with just 50% of the market, you will not be able to become the number three brand. So, yes, I think, the point is absolutely valid, which you mentioned that offline is also important. And we definitely recognize that which is why we are making efforts in that direction.
Today, you see, we have a presence across all Reliance Digital stores. So, around 600 stores across India where we are present, we are featured, we have fixtures, we have visibility, and we have promoters. Not just that, we have close to about 5000 general trade stores, which are premium general trade stores where we’ve got our own promoters, our own fixtures, our demo products and our product availability.
We are also leveraging our partnership with Reliance, where we are leveraging the Jiomart ecosystem, which is basically the online-to-offline ecosystem. So there if you see, Jiomart today has access to anywhere between 60,000 to 100,000 retail stores across India, and this includes even the smaller stores, right across the board. So the bottom of the pyramid stores are also with Jiomart. And the way it works is that the retailer doesn’t have to take the load of inventory because it is maintained by Jio. And then once the purchase happens, they deliver it to the retailer or the customer. So, we are leveraging that ecosystem to also reach out to ensure that our presence is across a width of distribution of approximately 25 to 30,000 stores. This year we will very easily have our presence in anywhere between 25 to 35,000 stores across India through Jiomart.
So, you can say we will have at least a reach of close to 40,000 retail stores across India, which will make sure that the consumers have the option to have a retail experience nd get their hands on the product and also purchase at retail.
Shivam: While I can’t give you the specifics, I mean I won’t be able to give you the exact names that we are bringing in our upcoming products. But, don’t worry. First of all, I think at the pace we are launching products, you will see a lot of things coming in, very soon in the market and you’ll be able to experience them. But I think stepping back and giving you a strategic perspective on AI, I think it’s important to share that we are completely committed to giving consumers meaningful AI experiences. In fact, our whole philosophy has been to give consumers meaningful smartphone experiences. We don’t want to necessarily give experiences that are just gimmicky in nature. So this is why if you see the Edge 50 Pro, it gives you camera experiences with AI features that optimise the camera and video quality and we even have the generative wallpapers based on Style Sync. It goes in line with our philosophy of giving very stylish, good-looking phones which appeals to a certain type of audience who might want to match their phones also with their attire. Right? That is all being powered by Moto AI which is basically our own on-device AI which is powered by LLM models.
But we are we are definitely open to expanding the universe of Moto AI, by not just creating experiences of our own, but also leveraging partner ecosystems or partner products in the near future. So we are open to that. It’s a matter of how we bring it together. But all in all, I think at least, one thing should be clear that our focus on Moto AI is very clear for us. You will see more and more AI features under the umbrella of Moto AI across Motorola products.
Shivam: I think one of the hallmarks or one of the key reasons for our success, in the Indian market is that the Indian consumers are very vocal. We get to hear a lot from them. We keep listening. So in fact, the camera feedback also came to us a few years back from Indian consumers. Only most global markets did not have feedback that Motorola cameras are not that great, but our Flipkart ratings, consumer comments, etc. were saying that they were not up to the mark. So, about two years ago, we started this journey of ensuring that we enhance our camera experience. And today we are seeing the results of that and it’s out there. So I think we definitely believe in a philosophy of listening to our consumers and listening to their pain points and coming back with solutions today.
So first of all, I think what you can see with the Edge 50 family; if you look at the Edge 40 series, we used to give two years of OS updates and three years of security updates. In the Edge 50 family, you are seeing already we have moved up to three years of OS updates and four years of security updates. So we have already increased the number of updates looking at what the Indian consumers want.
The second is concerning the timeliness of the updates. So now we’ve put in a lot of investments, time and effort to ensure that we have added a team specifically for India. So while there is a global team which rolls out software updates globally, we’ve also added a specific team in India to ensure the speed of the updates, ensuring that consumers get them the earliest possible. Not just the OS updates, but even the security updates, they reach the consumers, the earliest that is possible. Edge 40 series has already got their OS updates and that’s well in progress, but you will continue to see us improving in that area as well as like we have done in the camera. Hopefully, by next year, we will possibly be the fastest, in terms of giving the updates as well.
