Phone Makers Shift Focus
This holiday shopping season, the smartphone battle is going mainstream.
Having ceded much of the high end of the smartphone market to Apple Inc., slower-footed rivals such as Research In Motion Ltd., Nokia Corp. and Motorola Inc. are jostling for what remains up for grabs: cheaper cellphones that still provide Internet capabilities.
The result is a price war in midrange smartphones this holiday season. Wireless carriers and handset makers are focusing on more affordable smartphones—which skimp on features such as screen resolution and camera quality but allow users to surf the Internet and download applications.
“At the end of the day, if you want to address a bigger part of the market, [the midrange smartphone segment] is important,” said Florian Seiche, European president of Taiwan’s HTC Corp., which is vying for a foothold in that market with its Aria smartphone, which launched in the U.S. in June and sells through AT&T Inc. for $130 with a phone-service contract.
