Motorola To Make Its Entry To Bangladesh After A 10 Years Hiatus

It Is Set To Re-Enter Bangladesh After A Gap Of 10 Years With A Smartphone That Got Great Ratings Globally For Its Long Battery Life

Motorola To Make Its Entry To Bangladesh After A 10 Years Hiatus
By Wafiur Rahman

The phone — which has a 5000mAh battery, 16MP triple camera, 4GB RAM + 64GB Storage, 6.5” HD+ screen and stock Android OS — will be available exclusively on Daraz during their flagship 11.11 year-end sale

Remember Motorola? The American handset maker that used to rule the roost in the earlier part of the century and has since faded from consumers’ reckoning.

Now, under the ownership of Chinese Lenovo, Motorola is looking to regain its lost glittering glory, targeting the mid- to low-range smartphone market.

And, it is set to re-enter Bangladesh after a gap of 10 years with its Moto G8 Power Lite model, a smartphone that got great ratings globally for its long battery life, aesthetics and affordability.

The phone — which has a 5000mAh battery, 16MP triple camera, 4GB RAM + 64GB Storage, 6.5” HD+ screen and stock Android OS — will be available exclusively on Daraz during their flagship 11.11 year-end sale on November 11, said Salextra, Motorola’s local distributor, in a press release.

“Being a strong global brand with products that stand for quality and come with meaningful consumer innovations along with a differentiated, clean and secure stock Android experience; we are confident that our products will be able to delight the Bangladesh consumers,” said Prashanth Mani, managing director of Motorola Mobility of SAARC.

Salextra will disclose the pricing of the device on Monday. In India, the device sold for Rs 9,999.

Motorola’s re-entry to Bangladesh comes at a time when consumers are fast making the switch to smartphone from feature phone thanks to the global coronavirus pandemic, which has turbocharged digitalisation.

Thanks to the need for social distancing to keep the lethal pathogen at bay, people are now holding office meetings, taking classes, seeking healthcare advice, doing shopping and banking, paying bills and watching entertainment content from one’s handheld device.

But how successful Motorola would be in its second innings in Bangladesh, where local brand Walton leads the market, remains up in the air.

“There are many foreign brands in the market, but doing business will be difficult for any new brand, even a returning one,” said Rezwanul Haque, chief executive o cer of Transsion, which makes Tecno-brand smartphones and itel feature phones in Bangladesh.

Although entry barriers have reduced from previous times, fierce competition exists among the current manufacturers. The other factors such as affordability also remains a key role in market penetration.

“Competition between the companies was intensive, but not everyone was getting organic growth,” said Haque, also the former general secretary of the Bangladesh Mobile Phone Importers Association (BMPIA).

But Salextra remains confident.

“We are getting an extremely positive response from the Motorola fans all over the country,” said Shakib Arafat, managing director of Salextra.

In India, the Moto G8 Power Lite is a top-selling handset on the e-commerce site Flipkart with high product ratings.

“We are committed to ensuring that Bangladesh gets a taste of the latest and global standard products from Motorola, who are the pioneers in mobile technology and one of the leading smartphone brands globally,” Arafat added.

Given the soaring demand for smartphones thanks to the pandemic, the more players there are in the market the bigger the industry will be, said Mohammad Mesbah Uddin Ahmed, joint secretary of BMPIA.

The official entry of a reputed brand is also in line with the government’s vision to snuff out illegal mobile phone import by 2021 to boost revenue collection and to protect the interests of the 11 local manufacturers and 72 importers.

The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has already prepared a database of legal devices and is working to set up the National Equipment Identity Register (NEIR), a central system that will enable the authorities to disable illegal mobile devices.

Over the last three years, 11.8 crore IMEI numbers have been added to the database with input from importers, operators and manufacturers, according to the regulatory body.

The BTRC is also sending text messages to consumers asking them to check whether the handset they want to purchase was brought into the country through the legal channel. Consumers can send a text message to 16002 with the 16-digit IMEI number of the handset intended for purchase.

Currently, the government imposes 57 per cent tax on smartphone imports and 32 per cent on basic and feature phones. On the other hand, the tax on locally assembled and manufactured handsets is 18 per cent and 13 per cent respectively.

Consumers who bought their mobile phones from abroad should keep the purchase receipt and related documents to register IMEIs when the NEIR kicks off later.

The crackdown is part of the government’s plan to reduce import dependency and promote domestic manufacturing of mobile phones, said Ahmed, also the chief marketing officer of Fair Electronics, the local manufacturer of Samsung handsets.

As a part of this, the government incentivised local manufacturing, while discouraging imports through duty hike, he added.

At the end of September, total mobile phone subscribers stood at 16.7 crore — the highest yet, according to data from the BTRC.

This news was originally published at Dhaka Tribune