Motorola CEO criticises Apple over iPhone price

Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside has criticised Apple over the high pricing of the iPhone, despite claiming this premium fee could help his company regain ground in the smartphone race.

Suggesting that Apple has kept the iPhone price high despite significant drops in component prices, Woodside has claimed that, moving forward, Motorola will launch more competitively priced handsets in a bid to capitalise on this gap in the market.

“When the iPhone first came out it cost $650 and today it costs $650,” the Motorola CEO said speaking with TrustedReviews.

He added: “The functionality is the same – it’s better but it’s very similar – and we know that the cost of components has continued to fall. We think the prices of high quality devices has to change.”

As well as knocking Apple for its high smartphone costs, the Motorola head has outlined how he expects to use this to his benefit.

Looking to the future, Woodside stated: “We think there’s an opportunity particularly as mobile computing becomes less of a privilege and more of a necessity. There’s a huge market for that type of product which, for some reason, the smartphone industry has not really focussed on.”

He added: “The Moto G was the first attempt to put something out there that was super-compelling value. Something that can help our business get scale and get back into Europe, but can also provide a whole new generation of consumers with a really compelling, simple, intuitive Android experience which we think is important.”

Unlike the iPhone 5S, or even the iPhone 5C which cost wannabe owners from £549 and £469, the Motorola Moto G costs just £135 despite being bestowed with an array of specs more befitting a device twice the price.

Boasting a 4.5-inch, 720p HD display, the Motorola Moto G specs sheet sees a 1.2GHz quad-core processor line up alongside a 5-megapixel forward-facing camera, 1GB of RAM and Google’s latest Android 4.4 KitKat OS.