By Sinead Carew and Alexei Oreskovic
NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Motorola onThursday unveiled its highly anticipated Moto X smartphone,which will be customizable with different colors for AT&Tcustomers and marks the cellphone maker's first flagship devicesince Google Inc bought the company in 2012.
The Moto X will go on sale in the United States at the endof August or the beginning of September for a suggested retailprice of $199.99 to customers who sign a two-year contract atfive of the biggest U.S. mobile network operators.
Google, which spent $12.5 billion to acquire money-losingMotorola, faces a steep climb in its effort to revive the mobilephone pioneer in a smartphone market now dominated by Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics.
Once the global No. 2 phone maker, Motorola's market sharewas down to 2 percent in the second quarter, ranking it 12thamong smartphone makers, according to Research firm StrategyAnalytics.
Motorola is betting that it can win over consumers byoffering a huge palette of colors to personalize their phones aswell as unusual phone materials such as wood.
In order to promise delivery of customized phones withinfour days, Motorola had contract manufacturing partnerFlextronics International Ltd build a factory in theUnited States.
AT&T Inc, the No. 2 U.S. mobile service provider, willhave exclusive rights to let its customers customize the phonefrom a selection of 18 colors for the back, two colors for thefront and seven accent colors for an undisclosed time period.
Rivals Verizon Wireless, Sprint Corp, T-MobileUS and U.S. Cellular will only be able to offerblack-and-white versions of the device.