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Motorola's RAZR V3 mobile phone
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Motorola's slim RAZR mobile phone has outsold Samsung Electronics¡¯ very similar V740 by 120,000 to 90,000 since the two phones were released near-simultaneously in Korea in June. Motorola's RAZR, touted as slimmer than a pack of Esse cigarettes, is only 14.5 §® thick and weighs 98 g, giving the world¡¯s second largest handset maker a much-needed boost against Samsung on its home turf.
Thanks in large part to that success, Motorola is re-claiming a sliver of the Korean mobile phone market, previously almost exclusively in the hands of local makers led by Samsung and LG Electronics. After introducing mobile phones Korea in 1988, Motorola held over 70 percent of the market, but it started to lose customers in the mid-1990s, not least because of its failure to provide CDMA-type phones -- the local standard -- in time, while its long design cycle soon dated its models compared to the sleeker domestic ones.
It could be argued that the potential to sell at most 200,000 slim phones a year in a market like Korea, where 15 million phones are sold annually, is no big deal. But the country is a kind of test bed market for the world, so winning one round in the competition here can have larger consequences.
Besides, RAZR sets a new trend whereby function follows form rather than the other way round. Korean handset makers have been focusing on squeezing as many features as possible into one phone, from camera and MP3 players to game and digital multimedia broadcasting functions. But Motorola just thought slim. The idea is that multi-functions are becoming universal, so the company is putting a premium on design by reading buyers¡¯ tastes in advance. ¡°RAZR is making waves among young people who cherish design,¡± says Im Chung-hwa, a marketing director with Motorola Korea.
Even for Motorola, the huge success of the phone came something of a surprise, and other local mobile phone makers like LG Electronics and Pantech have now also jumped on the slim bandwagon.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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