Motorola won’t kill the Moto G, but be prepared for fewer phones

Lenovo may be starting to “phase out” Motorola, but that doesn’t mean it’s doing away with Motorola’s most successful phones. Despite reports that a Lenovo executive said the Moto G and Moto E will be discontinued, Motorola tells The Verge that this is not the case and that the remarks have been misunderstood. “Although we are simplifying the combined Motorola and [Lenovo] portfolio, we have no plans to retire Moto G, our most successful smartphone, or Moto E,” a Motorola representative says. As Motorola points out, the Moto G has been a huge win for it, so discontinuing the line would be a strange decision.

Some of the confusion comes from how Motorola said it would continue to work on phones under Lenovo. In a blog post Friday, Motorola said that it would be working on its own Moto line as well as Lenovo’s Vibe line and that this combined portfolio of phones would be “streamlined” — meaning we’re going to see fewer devices overall. The Moto line is generally the nicer of the two, but the plan, apparently, isn’t to let Moto take the high end of the market while Vibe takes the low end. More likely, they’ll continue to target different regions, with the Moto brand appearing throughout North America and the Vibe brand targeting China and India, among other countries. By combining the two lines, Lenovo may be able to hit all of the regions it wants while still making fewer phones.