Is the Moto Q missing the mark?
Motorola Inc. cell phone chief Ron Garriques promised investors in May that the company's new Q smartphone would follow the same trajectory as its smash hit Razr cell phone, selling 750,000 units in the first 90 days and 5 million in the first nine months.
But early returns suggest that his forecast was optimistic, and that Motorola missed a chance to connect with the fast-growing smartphone market before rivals piled in with a slew of new offerings. Motorola sold 150,000 Qs in the second quarter, amid complaints about its high price, clunky software and tendency to freeze up.
"I went through three of them and had problems with each. I would go to make a call, and it would say 'dialing' and stay there forever," says Tracy King, a lease manager at a Ford dealership in Detroit. A Motorola spokesman calls the complaints "isolated" and says, "We're getting good feedback on the Q." But Sam Barhoumeh, manager of Presidential Wireless in Chicago, which sells a variety of smartphones, says customers returned about 10% of the Qs his store sold in the first month, a return rate he considers high. "It left a bad taste in people's mouths," Mr. Barhoumeh says.
Full Story here.