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Motorola's Droid and the Threat to the Palm Pre
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The Palm Pre made waves when it was announced at CES in January of this year. Palm came from nowhere with a groundbreaking new device that featured a thoughtfully designed mobile OS on a carrier that has been suffering a deluge of customer losses. The Pre has given some healthy competition to the iPhone and Blackberries, and recent web reports suggest that webOS internet browsing has increased to surpass Windows Mobile. Palm has introduced the paid applications to their still-in-Beta App Catalog, but the growth has been slow. At this rate, webOS as a platform will suffer greatly under the oncoming wave of Android devices, specifically the Motorola Droid.
The Droid is coming from another underdog: Motorola. Since the Motorola announcement at the end of the summer about their new MotoBlur facade for Android, the buzz about the carrier has been picking up steam. Then came Droid, a phone on the number one carrier: Verizon. A massive ad campaign toting the capabilities of the Droid in comparison to the iPhone has been bombarding the internet, television and print media. Verizon is throwing their full weight behind a phone that is arguably the most attractive on Big Red. With Verizon's support, and the planned devices from Motorola running Android, Motorola is in a great position to come out ahead of Palm. If no one saw Palm making a comeback, even fewer saw hope for Motorola, but it's looking like Moto's gain is Palm's loss.
The droid will certainly attract anti-iPhone consumers, and those that rely on Verizon's network for coverage. Previously, the Palm Pre was viewed as the best contender in the smartphone wars, but because of Android's larger app store, the availability of an attractive device on a network that many feel the iPhone should exist on, and the massive amount of marketing, the Droid is going to certainly attack the Pre's marketshare as much as, if not more than, the iPhone's.
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