14 DAY TRIAL // In its continuous attempt to be a leader in the large emerging mobile markets (like China or India), Motorola has recently announced the release of four new mid to low-end handsets in Brazil: W396, W388, W231 and W180.
These W-series phones come after Moto has also announced no less than other five new handsets for the Brazilian market, namely the ZN200 and Z10 sliders, the 5 Megapixel ZN5 and the ROKR E8 candybar, plus the W6 clamshell.
Motorola W396 and W388 come with the same features, but different form factors: the W396 is a clamshell while the W388 is a candybar. The common features of the handsets include: MP3 player, dedicated music keys, Windows Media Player support, Bluetooth, FM radio with RDS, Crystal Talk technology, a VGA photo camera, Java games, 7.5MB of internal memory and a microSD 1GB card included in the package (it can be changed with a 2GB one).
Motorola W231 is another music-oriented candybar that features MP3 player, FM radio and FM transmitter, a 3.5mm headset jack, Crystal Talk technology and a 1GB card. The handset has several color versions, including a green and a red one.
Motorola W180 is the most basic of the new phones, as it doesn't come with MP3 player but it does feature FM radio and Crystal Talk technology.
Although all the four new W-series handsets are "officially released" and have appeared in a press release on Motorola Brazil's website, there's no word yet on their prices or on their market availability. Anyway, Brazilian mobile users should expect to find any of the new Motos in stores, starting next month, for reasonable retail prices.
With about 128 million mobile users at a total population of around 186 million, Brazil is surely an attractive market for Motorola as well as for any other handset manufacturer.
