Motorola bids for cool on Yahoo

According to Benjamin Tse, senior marketing manager at Motorola, the online auction will kick off next month, with 100 Slvr L7 and V3i models engraved with local celebrity autographs up for grabs. The auction is expected to drive up the price of the handsets, which retail for HK$2,780 (US$360) for the Slvr L7 and $3,680 for the V3i, as users make bids over a two-week period. "We wanted to capitalise on Yahoo's reach in Hong Kong and give (our products) maximum visibility," said Tse, adding that the company was also working with Chinese-language Next magazine to promote the initiative in the city, while an exhibition featuring the auctioned phones will be held at a shopping mall. According to Arthur Chow, director of e-commerce services at Yahoo Hong Kong, the portal's auction site receives about 800,000 visitors per month, giving it 90 per cent market share, well ahead of rivals eBay.com, gotohk.com and Sun Hung Kai's Reddot.com. "The profile of these consumers is different to internet users, who tend to be largely students. Auction users, in comparison, are more mature, with more than 50 per cent of users aged above 18. They also have more spending power," he said. "The auction is an additional way to profile the brand online. Auctions are a highly involved channel so, if interested, users can click for additional brand information and there are question and answer sessions."