Droid ad pokes fun at iPhone antenna problem

Land on the home page of smartphone maker Motorola and you’ll see an ad for its new Android-powered Droid X smartphone with the snarky tag line, “No Jacket Required.”

Zing! It’s an obvious reference to the Apple iPhone 4 introduction that was marred by a problem with the new model’s antenna. If you touched the phone in the wrong place, your signal diminished; a problem only solved by Apple giving away free rubber cases -- i.e., a “jacket” -- to improve reception.

Such are the indications of how the unrelenting competition in the smartphone will continue this summer with the iPhone 4, Droid X, Samsung Galaxy S and others all making their bows.

A fresh indicator of how the market is doing is the release Thursday of new global mobile phone sales numbers from IDC. For the second quarter of 2010, mobile phone sales jumped by 14.5 percent from the second quarter of 2009. But while iPhone and Android are getting most of the buzz and advertising spending in the U.S., neither brand is in the top five worldwide.

Market share leaders (and their share percentage), in order, are Nokia (35 perrcent), Samsung (20.1 percent), LG Electronics (9.6 percent), Research in Motion/BlackBerry (3.5 percent), Sony Ericsson (3.5 percent). Total unit sales were 317.5 million in the second quarter, up from 277.2 million in the year ago second quarter.

The fact that the market share of “Other” jumped to 28.3 percent this year from 25.3 percent a year ago is an indicator of how the market is becoming “fragmented” and that “challengers’ are making inroads against the top global brands, said IDC. Nokia, LG and Sony, for instance, all lost a few points of market share over the year.

"That worldwide growth was driven primarily by vendors outside the top vendors is particularly noteworthy," said Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC’s Mobile Devices and Technology Trends Team. Although the sales figures are for smartphones and traditional mobile phones, “Companies with a strict focus on the smartphone market, like RIM, Apple and HTC have clearly benefited from steadily increasing user interest.”

In North America, the second quarter saw the introduction of iPhone 4, HTC Droid Incredible and the EVO 4G, the latter running on Sprint’s network. Sales for Droid X, Galaxy S and “several handsets from Dell” are expected to get market attention the rest of the year, IDC said. I wonder what the Dell products are like.

Also ahead are smartphones running the new Microsoft Windows Phone 7 operating system.

While Motorola hopes to keep the iPhone 4 antenna problem alive with its “No Jacket Required” tag line, Apple seems to be trying to put “antenna-gate” behind it with an ad campaign showing how the iPhone 4 is meant for communicating the most important moments of your life. Highlighting the front-facing video camera that allows two-way video conferencing, the ads show a wife using the iPhone 4 to tell her husband they’re going to have a baby. In another, a son shows his father the first images of his newborn grandchild (see below).

Wow! It makes it seem like iPhone 4 is much too important for life’s more mundane moments. Are you supposed to get another phone just to say, “Hey, would you pick up some laundry detergent on the way home? We’re out.”