Motorola Senior Marketing Director Marcus Frost made some enticing comments recently. In an interview with TechRadar, Frost said that Motorola was pursuing a foray outside the USA with the Moto X. Saying they were curious about the EMEA region for the X, Frost left it very open-ended.
Specifically, Frost said “The reception of Moto X has been fantastic and we’re continuously perusing opportunities in the EMEA region, so really watch this space”. Bolstering those remarks was Motorola Vice President for the EMEA, Magnus Ahlqvist, saying “We are serious about Europe and we want to bring strong propositions to the market.” Again, pretty open-ended and void of commitment.
Recent reports put the Moto X sales somewhere around 500,000 thus far. It’s important to remember that is only for the US and Canada, with the Moto Maker — arguably the best part of the Moto X — only available to AT&T until very recently. A lack of customization options may have hurt Moto X sales. So could the specs, which matter very little for a device that puts contextual data ahead of cores and screen resolution.
For the world stage, the Moto X can (and probably should) be considered a beta program. As Motorola finds its new direction, great handsets like the Moto X will find the world. Considering Motorola also had nothing to say about two other major markets — Japan and Australia — we would consider the EMEA part of a staged worldwide rollout. If Motorola were going to update the handset annually, which is the normal course of action, the EMEA would need to see the handset soon to make a timeframe for upgrade make sense. Let’s hope that’s the case, and Motorola is just being coy.
