Motorola’s Shivam Ranjan on Signature 27: “This is the best phone we’ve ever created”
Motorola is targeting the top end of India’s smartphone market with the Signature 27, and the company says it’s its best phone yet. In a conversation with 91mobiles, Shivam Ranjan, Motorola’s APAC Marketing Head, discussed what’s in the phone, why Motorola chose Qualcomm’s top-end chip this time, and how the company plans to handle pricing in a market where phone prices have been climbing all year. There’s no India launch date or price yet, but Ranjan was candid about the pressure the memory crunch is putting on the whole industry.
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What Motorola is promising with the Signature 27
Ranjan said Motorola has gone all out on the chipset, calling the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 the most powerful chipset available, with major gains across the CPU, GPU, and NPU. He tied that to Motorola’s AI pitch: with a stronger NPU and what he described as a breakthrough six-antenna design, the phone is built for both on-device AI and cloud-based agentic AI models. According to Ranjan, no other phone has six antennas, and the setup should improve cloud connectivity and download speeds.
The phone also gets what Motorola calls an Arctic mesh cooling system, which combines a diamond-infused gel, liquid metal, a copper mesh, and a 3D vapour chamber that is 25 percent larger than the one on last year’s Signature. Ranjan said last year’s slim Signature didn’t have heating problems, and this system is meant to let the faster chip perform without throttling. He added that there are other things about the phone he can’t talk about yet.
Why Motorola went for the Extreme chip
I asked Ranjan why Motorola went the Extreme chip route instead of the base Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6. He said last year’s Signature 26 was just entering the flagship space and they wanted a balanced product rather than one defined only by power. So the phone used a less powerful Snapdragon chip than the top-end Elite.
“The Signature 27 is our attempt to go all out.”But customers also told Motorola they wanted an out-and-out flagship, and the Signature 27 is the answer to that. “This is our attempt to go all out,” he said, adding that Motorola wants to take on anyone in flagship performance and experience. He was also careful to say the phone isn’t just about specs, describing the Signature as “not just a brick of pure power” but a device meant to reflect the user’s personality.
On pricing and the memory crunch
I asked how the Extreme chip and this year’s price increases fit together. Ranjan said the whole industry is going through a memory supercycle that no brand can avoid, and that the price impact will be there for every manufacturer, Motorola included. He added that being part of Lenovo leaves Motorola better equipped to handle it than many rivals.
He couldn’t comment on the Signature 27’s India price, but said Motorola sees an opportunity in the situation. Consumer demand may shrink, but it won’t disappear, and buyers will look for value more than before, which he defined as price relative to what you get rather than price alone. To keep the Signature 27 accessible, Motorola will use bank offers, NBFC offers, and EMI options, alongside after-sales perks like the Signature Club.
To keep the Signature 27 accessible, Motorola will use bank offers, NBFC offers, and EMI options, alongside after-sales perks like the Signature Club. On how consumers are reacting to the price hikes of the past several months, Ranjan said the initial shock and disbelief, when some buyers felt brands were taking advantage of them, has passed, and people now understand that the memory supercycle is here and is the new normal. But he doesn’t think buyers have fully absorbed how much the price they pay for a given level of value has changed. “I personally believe it’ll still take time, especially for India,” he said, noting that consumer incomes haven’t risen in the same proportion. He expects acceptance to keep growing but thinks it will take a few more months.
On design and partnerships
Motorola has a multi-year exclusive partnership with Bang & Olufsen, in addition to its long-running tie-up with Pantone. Ranjan said the B&O link goes beyond sound quality to the design and craftsmanship the brand is known for, which he sees as a fit for the Signature’s positioning at buyers who are tasteful and want something differentiated. More broadly, he said Motorola’s approach is to work with experts, including Corning, Dolby, and Bose, rather than reinvent the wheel. The Signature 27 itself uses a mix of finishes, including ceramic, silk, and fabric.
How Motorola made it into India’s top five
Ranjan said Motorola reached the top five in India in Q1 with a market share of 8.9 percent, and that the company’s goal is to climb to number three over the coming years. He credited a mix of factors:
- Competitive portfolio: products across every price segment
- AI choice: Moto AI acts as an orchestration layer while letting users pick Gemini, Copilot, or Perplexity
- Imaging: Motorola says its cameras have improved sharply, helped by R&D in Bangalore focused on Indian skin tones
- CMF and partnerships: colours, materials, finishes, and tie-ups with the likes of Bose and Pantone
- Ecosystem: earbuds, watches, tablets, and PCs alongside phones, which helps with cross-selling
- Software updates: Ranjan said Motorola is the second brand after Google to roll out Android 17, a response to past criticism of delayed updates
He said the thread running through all of it is that Motorola acts on consumer feedback, using the camera and software update criticism of past years as examples.
The Signature 27 will be one of the first phones to use the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 in India, alongside the iQOO 16 and Xiaomi 18 Pro. This aggressive push into the premium segment, while ambitious, will test Motorola’s brand perception in a highly competitive market. We should learn more about the Signature 27’s India launch date, pricing, and availability in the weeks to come.
