LG’s exit from the smartphone business presented a unique opportunity for the ever-competitive field that makes up the Android OEM world. LG, even towards the end, sold a substantial amount of handsets (majority in the low-end to mid-tier range), so naturally, companies like Samsung, Motorola, and OnePlus would be vying for those customers. As it turns out, Motorola did very well at turning LG customers into Moto customers.
According to data provided by Counterpoint, Motorola has officially taken and held the US’ #3 smartphone OEM spot for a calendar year, ending with 10% of the market. That’s behind Apple’s massive 58% and Samsung’s respectable 22%. In the graph below, we can see that it was between February and April of 2021 that Motorola began to gobble most of what was left of LG’s phone business.
Counterpoint notes that this success has been highly due to sales of Motorola’s Moto G Stylus, Moto G Power, and Moto G Pure phones.
It will be fun to watch Motorola continue efforts to keep this position. It’s no surprise that OnePlus is moving hard into the mid-range markets with the Nord line. Same thing can be said for Google and its Pixel A lineup. Things will surely get spicy.
Pop your bottles, Moto!
// Counterpoint