Motorola’s market share in the U.K. is soaring

According to data from a Kantar Worldpanel ComTech report for the three months to February 2014, Motorola’s budget Moto G device has helped boost the company from “almost nothing” to account for 6 percent of British smartphone sales in just six months. The Moto G was launched in November last year. The report notes that almost half of the Moto G owners in the UK are aged between 16 and 24, with 83 percent male.

In the space of six months, Motorola has moved from the depths of smartphone oblivion to claim 6 percent of the UK market, data from Kantar’s smartphone sales report for the three months until the end of February shows. Kantar says 83 percent of the purchasers of the Moto G are male, almost 50 percent are aged between 16 and 24, and 40 percent of purchasers have incomes under £20,000. Dominic Sunnebo, strategic insight director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, said that Motorola’s success shows the impact of online purchasing, with 48 percent of the device’s sales occurring online. “It highlights the speed at which a quality budget phone can disrupt a market. The same pattern can be seen in France with Wiko, which has 8.3 percent share, and Xiaomi in China with 18.5 percent,” he said.