Motorola Inc, the world's second-largest mobile phone vendor, plans to launch its first handset with a Chinese name, Ming (明), in Taiwan this month, targeting the fast-growing "Greater China" market, a company official said yesterday.
The move is also part of Motorola's efforts to win the battle with rival Nokia Ojy for the top position in Taiwan's NT$40 billion (US$1.236 billion) phone market.
"The Ming camera phone, designed exclusively for the Greater China market, has gained popularity in China since its launch. We believe local consumers will love it, too," said Tom Hsiao (
Motorola is scheduled to introduce the Ming phone to the Taiwanese market this month, about two months after it debuted in Beijing ahead of the Lunar New Year.
Hsiao made the comments on the sidelines of the launch of its new third-generation (3G) handset, a member of the ultra-slim RAZR series, and showed off a white Ming phone with a touch-screen and a 2-mega pixel camera.
"We plan to sell more middle-and-high end mobile phones this year in order to achieve our goal of safeguarding the number one spot," Hsiao said, adding that the Ming phone was one of them.
Motorola also plans to introduce its first High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) phone to Taiwan in the fourth quarter, having already offered the advanced phones to NTT DoCoMo Inc subscribers in the first half of this year.
HSDPA technology offers operators more than double the system capacity of the current Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) technology and significantly shortens response times for interactive services, drastically improving the user's experience when using broadband services.
Motorola has switched strategies after lagging rival Nokia in handset sales over the past few months. The company, which currently owns about 25 percent of the local market, previously sold large volumes of low-priced handsets, working closely with local operators. But the approach apparently failed to sustain sales growth after several competitors followed suit.
Hsiao said that 2G handsets would still be a driver for the company's sales this year, as migration to pricey 3G handsets would remain slow.
He predicted that 3G mobile phones would account for only 15-20 percent of total handset sales in the Taiwanese market, echoing comments from Nokia's local head, Loren Shuster.
Shuster said at a press briefing on Feb. 27 that the domestic 3G market could be considered a success if the number of users rose to account for 15 percent of total phone sales this year.
Hsiao declined to give details about Motorola's product portfolio for this year.
Handset sales are expected to inch up 4 percent to nearly 7 million units this year, according to the Taipei-based Market Intelligence Center's (
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