Motorola launched a handset line-up in Dublin yesterday that it hopes will successfully follow its iconic RAZR, one of the best-selling handsets of all time.
The KRZR (pronounced krazer), a slightly narrower and longer handset that is an "evolution" of the RAZR, is the mobile the company hopes will be RAZR's heir apparent.
It is being offered as a mid-tier phone from the start, rather than taking the RAZR route of starting as a top-tier handset and diversifying into mid-tier models over two years, said John O'Brien, Motorola mobile devices, Ireland.
The KRZR is the result of Motorola "looking for a new 'wow' factor," said O'Brien. Like the RAZR, it is also a clamshell phone, a category that now constitutes 40 per cent of the mobile market and is gaining on "candybar" brick style handsets, once the dominant form.
RAZR packed sufficient "wow" factor to be seen as a key element of Motorola's recovery as a leading handset manufacturer.
As Apple did with the iPod brand, Motorola has been able to design a whole coolness face lift for the company around its "hello Moto" brand campaign, strongly identified with the RAZR, or the V3 as it is more formally known.
Sales of the KRZR are already outpacing the RAZR in its first quarter, according to Motorola, but the RAZR had a more limited market availability initially as it came only as a GSM handset.
Motorola didn't launch a handset that would work on the dominant CDMA networks in the US until RAZR's second year, leaving over half its potential US market unable to buy it.
Mr O'Brien said the KRZR will be offered as a mid-tier handset at around €299 for prepay and from €29-€79 on postpay (where handsets are subsidised). One version of the KRZR features an etched design from tattoo artist Ami James, from TV series Miami Ink.
A high-end 3G KRZR will be out in the coming weeks and a range of other handsets including the mass market W220 will also be rolled out for Christmas.
Motorola intends to keep pushing mobiles as lifestyle and fashion items, an approach that has proven successful with the KRZR and is also the strategy of other handset manufacturers.
Ireland is still characterised as a mid to low-tier market and buys fewer high-tier phones than most of Europe, said O'Brien.
Postpay mobile users are the typical high-tier market as the handsets are heavily subsidised. But 70 to 80 per cent of the Irish market prefers prepay, even though costs are much higher for calls and handsets.
