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Fighting fire with napalm: How Google’s Moto X will battle the iPhone 5S this fall

Updated Jul 12th, 2013 2:36PM EDT

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Fighting fire with fire is only a safe bet when the odds are somewhat balanced. Google knows this, so to battle Apple’s next-generation iPhone 5S this fall, it’s planning to fight with napalm. A recent report revealed that Google will spend half a billion dollars or possibly even more to market its Moto X smartphone following its launch in the late summer or early fall. As Quartz points out, that means Google will spend half of Apple’s entire fiscal 2012 advertising budget to promote a single phone.

It might sound crazy, but Google has no coice but to spend big if it hopes to make Motorola’s new phone a blockbuster. Tens of millions of people will be planning to purchase Apple’s iPhone 5S this fall, so it’s going to take some serious spending if Google hopes to convince a sizable chunk of them to consider the Moto X instead. Samsung’s Galaxy Note III is expected to launch this fall as well, as are a handful of other flagship phones from the likes of HTC, Nokia and BlackBerry.

The Motorola Moto X will be a user-customizable phone built in the U.S. and it is expected to feature a 720p display, a 1.7GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 Pro, a 10-megapixel camera, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage and Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. The Moto X has been pictured in several leaks and it will reportedly be available in a number of colors.

Zach Epstein
Zach Epstein Executive Editor

Zach Epstein has been the Executive Editor at BGR for more than 10 years. He manages BGR’s editorial team and ensures that best practices are adhered to. He also oversees the Ecommerce team and directs the daily flow of all content. Zach first joined BGR in 2007 as a Staff Writer covering business, technology, and entertainment.

His work has been quoted by countless top news organizations, and he was recently named one of the world's top 10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes. Prior to BGR, Zach worked as an executive in marketing and business development with two private telcos.