Popular Motorola Moto G, Moto E series budget phones will not be shelved, says company

Motorola executives have refuted media reports that Lenovo might retire Moto G and Moto E series soon.

Earlier in week, Motorola's parent company Lenovo's SVP (senior vice president) Chen Xudong in an interview with Digital Trends revealed that the company will only launch 5.0-inch screen based Moto series flagship phones 2016 onwards.

The statement apparently left many Motorola fans bewildered, who were led to believe that Lenovo may shelve budget handset series Moto G and Moto E and instead promote the parent company's Vibe series.

This news comes just days after Motorola COO revealed that the fabled brand will be phased out by this year-end, and all of its devices will bear "Moto by Lenovo" tag.

Read more: Cell phone pioneer brand Motorola to be phased out in 2016: COO

However, the Mexican and USA arms of Motorola have refuted the claims and said that Xudong's statement has been misconstrued by the media. The company will not ditch any of the Moto series devices at least for the foreseeable future.

When IBTimes India contacted Motorola's Asia Pacific representative, this is what they had to say: "Chen Xudong's remarks to Chinese media have been misunderstood. Although we are simplifying the combined Motorola and Vibe portfolio, we have no plans to retire Moto G, our most successful smartphone, or Moto E." 

On 8 January, Motorola, to dispel reports of the brand's retirement from smartphone business, said that the company has moved to the core mobile development division of Lenovo. Motorola legacy is too big to vanish and will continue to exist under the new parent company and focus on improving Moto and Vibe series phones' reach in global market.

"This latest move is all about where we focus our brand marketing efforts in the future. That will be on our two hero smartphone brands: Moto and Vibe, with the Lenovo corporate brand tying all of our consumer and commercial products together more holistically," said Motorola on the official blog.

In a related development, all Moto series phones getting launched in 2016 are speculated to boast finger-print based bio-metric security feature, which was sorely missed in the 2015 flagship models Moto X Style and Moto Droid 2 (aka Moto X Force).