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Droid opening weekend modest
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Motorola Droid
It seems like new smartphone launch sales are being watched as closely as movie opening box office receipts, given today’s coverage of the introduction of the Motorola Droid.
A number of posts today noted the seemingly modest sales of the $200 smartphone, introduced Nov. 6 and running Google’s Android 2.0 operating system, which is being compared to the Apple iPhone.
The latest iteration of the iPhone, the 3GS, hit the 1 million unit sales mark the weekend after it was introduced June 19, also a Friday. Verizon, the exclusive wireless carrier in the U.S. for Droid, didn’t release weekend box office for the device, but Scott Moritz, writing on TheStreet.com this morning, noted “had Verizon hit the 1 million mark, you'd know about it.”
Still, the comparison in some ways is unfair. Apple sold 1 million iPhones in one weekend because it was selling them in 20 countries, not just the U.S., noted Dan Frommer in Silicon Alley Insider. Also, Apple isn’t so much a company as it is a religion with followers who swoon at every "...one more thing" tease by CEO Steve Jobs and devotees who camped out overnight at stores when iPhone version 1 came out in 2007. At the nearest Verizon store to where I live, in the little burg of Brentwood, Calif., news that 10 to 15 people waited in line for the store to open to buy a Droid struck me as a pleasant surprise.
Motorola – most people can’t name its CEO*, much less bow before him – hasn’t had a hit since the RAZR clamshell camera-phone was introduced in early 2005. Motorola sold about 50 million RAZRs by July of 2006. An analyst from Citi quoted in Frommer’s report says Motorola is expected to sell 1 million Droids before the year is out. Not too shabby, all things considered.
And let’s not forget Verizon’s network. It has been running an effective ad campaign of late comparing its 3G-speed network coverage area to AT&T’s – the only network on which you can run an iPhone in the U.S. – in which AT&T comes up woefully short. They even poke fun at iPhone’s “there’s an app for that” catch phrase by telling customers “There’s a map for that.” AT&T makes different claims in its ads, that it has “the fastest 3G network” (not the most ubiquitous) and “the best coverage worldwide” (Verizon only speaks to 3G coverage in the U.S.).
* Actually there are two. Gregory Brown and Sanjay Jha are co-CEOs of Motorola Inc.
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