The boss of Motorola has slammed iPhone prices as "outrageous" after its build-your-own phone service came under a scathing attack by Apple's design guru, Jony Ive.
Lenovo-owned Motorola offers a service called "Moto Maker" which lets users personally customize a Moto X smartphone.
In an interview with the New Yorker, Ive appeared to criticize Motorola's offering as reducing the role of the designer.
"Their value proposition was 'Make it whatever you want. You can choose whatever color you want.' And I believe that's abdicating your responsibility as a designer," Ive said, but asked the news website not to name the company he was talking about.
But Rick Osterloh, president of Motorola, has now hit back, defending his company's customizing service.
"Our belief is that the end-user should be directly involved in the process of designing products," Osterloh told the BBC on Wednesday.
"We're making the entire product line accessible. And frankly, we're taking a directly opposite approach to them (Apple)."
An 16GB iPhone 6 costs $749. In comparison, Motorola's higher-end Moto X starts at $399. Apple is clearly the dominant player with a 14.8 percent global market share in 2014, compared with 2.6 percent for Motorola, according to data from IDC.
Apple prices 'outrageous'
Chinese electronics giant Lenovo bought Motorola's mobile business from Google for $2.9 billion last year and the company has been focusing on making low- to- mid-end devices to tap growth in the emerging markets.
Osterloh said consumers are after affordable phones and the "outrageous prices" that Apple charges are not the future.
"We do see a real dichotomy in this marketplace, where you've got people like Apple making so much money and charging such outrageous prices. We think that's not the future," the Motorola president said.
"A great smartphone, and a great mobile internet experience, shouldn't be an expensive luxury. It should be a simple choice for everyone."