Google’s $500 million Moto X marketing splurge looks like a dud

Google earmarked around $500 million to market the Moto X and it’s still barely made a dent in the American smartphone market. The latest numbers from comScore show that Motorola’s American smartphone market share ticked up only slightly from 6.9% in July 2013 to 7% in October 2013 even though the company in that time launched several new smartphones including its flagship Moto X. That Google could put so much money into pushing a product and still only nudge the needle forward has to be disappointing, especially since it’s been trying to find a counterweight to keep Samsung’s domination of the Android market in check.

That said, things could still be worse for Motorola. For instance, it could be HTC, which saw its share of the American smartphone market fall further from 8% in July 2013 to 6.7% in October 2013. Or it could be BlackBerry, whose market share in the United States kept sliding from 4.3% in July to 3.6% in October. In fact, the only clear winner in comScore’s latest numbers was Samsung, which saw its market share in the U.S. rise from 24.1% in July to 25.4% in October even though it was competing with major launches from both Motorola and Apple over that time span. Apple, for what it’s worth, saw its U.S. market share climb slightly from 40.4% in July to 40.6% in October.

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This article was originally published on BGR.com

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