Initial Motorola Droid sales look good
(Credit:
Marguerite Reardon/CNET)
Early indications suggest that the Motorola Droid could be the breakout hit phone of the holiday season.
You might not have guessed it from the lack of long lines this past weekend, but analysts believe that Verizon is seeing strong sales of the Motorola Droid. The device went on sale on Friday across the country. And unlike other big launches for phones such as Apple's iPhone or even the Palm Pre, retailers had plenty of devices in stock, and customers didn't have to stand in long lines to get their phones.
Neither Verizon nor Motorola is providing exact sales figures, but David Samberg, a spokesman for Verizon, said sales were very strong over the weekend, with a steady stream of customers Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Store representatives in Manhattan confirmed this, with one sales associate telling me on Monday afternoon that there had been a steady stream of customers in the store all weekend and even through Monday.
Analysts also believe that the phone is selling well. Mark McKechnie, an analyst at Broadpoint AmTech, who covers Motorola, checked with a small sample of Verizon retailers around the country and said in a research note on Monday that he is encouraged by the anecdotal reports.
"While it is early, and the sample size is small, we are encouraged by our findings," he said.
McKechnie estimates that Verizon had about 200,000 phones in retail channels for the launch, with many stores in larger metropolitan markets, such as New York and Los Angeles, getting about 300 devices. Stores in cities such as San Francisco got more than a 100 devices, and retailers in smaller cities got between 25 and 40 devices each.
Locations were stocked well enough that there were no reports of any stores that were completely sold out. An employee at the Verizon Wireless store on West 34th Street in New York said his store had gotten about 500 Motorola Droids and HTC Android Eris phones for Friday. The store didn't sell out of either phone, but much of its stock is now gone.
That said, the store employee, who didn't want his name used, said his store did sell out of the $29.99 Droid docking station, which charges the device. As of Monday, the company still hadn't restocked its supply of that accessory.
McKechnie reported in his research note that the Droid outsold the HTC Eris, which also went on sale Friday. And checks with Verizon stores in Manhattan back up this claim. While there were plenty of customers looking at the HTC Android Eris in the Verizon stores I visited Monday afternoon, most people said they planned to buy the Droid. The main reasons were the device's higher-resolution screen, better camera, faster processor, and latest Android software.
Still, plenty of customers noted that they preferred the look of the HTC Eris over that of the Droid.
Verizon's marketing may also be paying off. Verizon is spending more money on the Droid advertising campaign than it has on any other device launch. At least one customer at the West 34th Street said Verizon's advertisements had convinced him to get the Droid instead of Apple's iPhone, which runs on AT&T's network.
"I was considering the iPhone," said Henry Goodison of the Bronx borough. "But I saw a commercial about AT&T's 3G coverage. It said, 'Here is AT&T's 3G coverage, and here is ours.' And I thought it would be better to have Verizon, if I travel to another state, where AT&T doesn't have 3G coverage."
AT&T is actually suing Verizon Wireless over this commercial, asserting that Verizon's advertisement is misleading consumers. Verizon dismisses this claim as untrue.
Marguerite Reardon has been a CNET News reporter since 2004, covering cell phone services, broadband, citywide Wi-Fi, the Net neutrality debate, as well as the ongoing consolidation of the phone companies. E-mail Maggie. 
Besides 3Gs, the iPhone does not natively support video-recording. You don't have native turn-by-turn navigation, nor do you have the ability to do flash photography. You don't have GV. You don't have a physical keyboard. You can't even run concurrent apps.
Why are you so threatened by it? Did your iPhone stop working? No, of course not. But now there's some pressure for Apple to improve the iPhone for its next iteration. See how competition works? It's good for everyone.
As for Cnet being biased against Apple, what stories are you reading? There is a positive story for Apple several times every week.
As for the Droid being an afterthought, isn't that what the Windows fanboys keep saying about the Mac. Did it happen? No, because the Mac is a great product. I think Android is still a bit of a work in progress, but it's not going to disappear any time soon. At the speed that Google is moving, it will continue to evolve and improve rapidly.
They r the biggest stifler of innovation.
Verizon rocks.
I'm a total fan boy and I'm typing this on my new MacBook Air (ha-ha, I bet you can't afford one). Anyway, all those features you described in the Droid were made available in the Palm Pre. How is that Palm Pre doing by comparison? Well, I'll tell you. Not well. Maybe not even well enough to save the company. This Verizon Droid is getting lots of press, but six months from now it will be as irrelevant as the Pre.
Motorola invented the cell phone in 1973. Without them, you would not have your crapple ?idon?t? phone. I guess Motorola is the true innovator.
...and aside from the Razr, it appears that the design hasn't changed all that much w/ them...
AT&T an innovator... maybe you might have a point. However, AT&T's innovation has NOTHING to do with cell phone. Most if not all of AT&T's innovation predates cell phones. When it comes to cell phones it took them forever just to enable a basic MMS service for the iPhone and you call them an innovator.
To me, NONE of the US cell phone carriers are innovators (the keyword here is "cell phone carriers"). If it wasn't for the iPhone Americans would never have realized the power of a smart phone because it was so locked down by the carriers previously unlike in EU or Asia where anyone can buy any phone and use on any network anywhere in the world. Now that's called free and open market. So yes in US the iPhone is innovative but for the rest of the world, it's just another phone because there is nothing new on the iPhone which you couldn't do previously. Even before the iPhone you could buy or sell software for the cell phones. You just couldn't get everything in one place. And the touchscreen was there you just had to use the stylus. The App store or the touch screen are NOT innovation, they are just clever designing and marketing and that's what Apple does best - Getting rid of the stylus and moving all Apps in a single location (App Store).
Don't get me wrong, just innovation is not enough for a product to sell. What sells the product or even makes a consumer think before considering any other product is design and marketing which is where Apple excels.
It doesn't matter which phone you get... the iPhone or the Droid, at the end the consumers WILL ALWAYS LOSE thanks to the wonderful US carriers because all they (the carriers) want is to lock you in for a 2 yr contract.
The reason why I say the consumers lose is because you don't really have a choice between the iPhone and the Droid. What you are choosing is between iPhone/AT&T and Droid/Verizon. In an open market the choice would be between iPhone and Droid regardless of which carrier you choose. Welcome to America where the only people who win are the shareholders and corporate moguls.
The only way to win is to get a stake in those companies. I own Apple, Google, and Verizon stocks. AT&T and Motorola... don't really care.
People will settle for a fake attempt of a phone that doesnt even come close to competing with the iphone just to say "its like an iphone."
I dont trust google and never will....ill stick with the iphone and most likely move to verizon if they offer it next year. I could care less if at&t and verizon go at it regarding coverage......in the end I want my precious iphone on a reliable network...sorry to say at&t is ok..not great.
Are you kidding? The map shown on Verizon's ads are directly FROM AT&T's own website.
So, in short, Verizons ads are accurate. The 3G AT+T coverage stinks, the apps store doesn't allow you to download on Edge, and the phone end of it, which is what it's primary function is supposed to be, just plain stinks.
Oh yeah, and that fine Safari browser...do you want to know how many times a week that thing crashes on my as well?
1) Simma down nah
2) The 1 million iPhones in one weekend, though impressive, is for 21 countries. The Droid is just for the US.
3) The Droid is not trying to be like the iPhone. It's doing things (many things) that the iPhone doesn't. Hence, the whole ad campaign premise.
I have been playing with my Droid phone all weekend and I have to say that it's really really awesome, and probably the best phone I've ever owned. And I'm speaking from a completely unbiased place, as I'm also an iPhone developer.
The Droid suits my needs where the iPhone fails. It works for me, and no Apple fanboy can take that away from me or any other person that enjoys their new Droid phone, regardless of sales figures.
"Munster now estimates that 400,000 iPhones were sold in the United States, 250,000 in the United Kingdom and an average of 18,000 each in the other 19 countries"
(http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/07/14/apple-sells-425000-iphone-3gs-in-three-days/)
http://www.trustedreviews.com/mobile-phones/news/2009/06/22/Apple---iPhone-3G-S-Sells-One-Million-Units-In-3-Days/p1
Yeah, right. You probably don't even own either phone. How do I know this? Well if you really are an iPhone developer, then there's no way you're making enough money to afford these phones! Zing!!! High five, anyone?
- it does Google navigation
- it does Google voice
- it does flash
- it tethers
Statement: The Droid does not have all the apps
Can you prove this? You don't believe that 100,000 applications for iPhone are all unique, right?
Statement: you can only install 256 mb of apps
That's true and that might be more that you can do with iPhone. If the applications are designed properly (and why should not they?) and use SD card, with multiple SD cards one can install more content-heavy applications in Droid than on iPhone. Not to mention that Droid provides much more memory for your music and videos.
Q: What does it do supposedly the the iPhone doesn't?
- it tethers"
If I'm correct Verizon stated Tethering is coming meaning its not here yet.
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/11/tethering-droid/
"Verizon Wireless is set to inaugurate tethering on the newly released Motorola Droid phone next year ? at a price. Most consumers will have to pay an additional $30 a month to use the feature.
?Tethering will not be available at launch, but it is scheduled,? says Brenda Raney, spokesperson for Verizon Wireless."
Granted At&t has yet to offer tethering
"The Droid ships with a 512 MB ROM which contains only 256 MB available for app storage. Google does not support installing apps to the SD card (and likely never will), so developers are limited in what they can create." --- from androidandme.com
After hearing all of these commercials touting the Droid and all of the things it "does" rather than the "iDon't's" of the iPhone, I'm shocked that they would not disclose this very important detail. Sorta dampens my excitement for this new phone. What do you guys think?
I do not. I did not claim I did. I said it was a well known fact which it is. Try Google search for "iphone bay area signal drop". The search returns more than 50,000 results. Here is one account from Engadget: "@Giroro - Wrong, my phone drops around 30% too and I live in the Bay Area. The iPhone is for #$%^ as a phone, and AT&T's network is just as bad."
Then again, for some people 30% dropped calls might be acceptable as long as they have an opportunity to use their fetish gadget :-)
That's exactly my point. Some people just want a good phone. Others want a good phone with a good service (i.e. Verizon).
So, now you have a lousy phone, on a lousy network (what good is all that "High Speed" part of the network for those that aren't in those tiny little areas?)... but it has a good tunes library. Good for you. I have work to get done, and I need my phone to work well... you know.... as a phone!
This is kind of like an 'my kid starting talking at 4 months', 'oh yeah? well my kid started doing calculus at 3 months' argument.
Both the droid and the iphone are very capable phones. The droid has some very nice features -- the display is beautiful with very high resolution, the video playback is very nice, it multitasks third party apps, the voice navigation included with google maps is really nice, the voice search works well, and although alot of people (rightly so) would like to have something like itunes for music syncing, I personally like simply dragging whatever mp3's I have onto the device. It only took a minute or so to copy my favorite songs from my pc onto the droid (no installation, no downloading .. just simple file copying). Plus it's a fun phone to play with (at least that's my opinion).
Also just to clarify the droid does only have 256 mb for apps but that's executable code. If an app has alot of data, such as a game, then it can store the data on the included 16gb SD card. 256 mb is alot for just code. And it does work with Exchange.
I'm still confused about this. I'm not a programmer or an Android specialist but there seems to be a lot of debate about this. I've been reading all the back and forth on this issue here and I don't know what is correct:
http://androidandme.com/2009/10/news/google-fails-to-address-app-storage-issue-with-droid-and-android-2-0/
You guys enjoy the iPhone, that's great. I love my Droid phone too. What exactly would make you fanboys happy?
I haven't developed anything for android yet so I don't know what is involved in doing this, but I hope the market place natively supports this. I know when I downloaded the Doom game, it downloaded the resource files when I launched the app, not when the app was installed.
iPhone is a amazing phone, but way OVERRATED!!!
But I agree it is sad how many Apple fanbois, who are constantly under the "Apple is irrelevant and has an insignificant market share" arguments from the MS fanbois, are so quick to jump on the "all competition must die!" bandwagon when a competing product debuts.
(Typed on my MBP, which is charging my Droid)
Inside all the noise regarding the mobile flavor of the month, I've found something more interesting than ANY sports championship and vastly more profitable. Earlier this year I bought Apple for $84. As of today, it has paid over $100,000. Palm Pre paid $5000, sold to buy Motorola. So far, Motorola has only pain pennies on the dollar. Let's see what six months will bring. Keep talking people. I've found my dream job in this bear economy. Your rants are paying my bills.
Everything the iPhone does that Android can't is because of the large amount of apps. It's a good bet that Android can catch up there rather quickly.
But the things Android does that iPhone can't are in the OS. Background notifications, true multitasking, easily transfer data or sync to multiple computers or your music library through drag and drop or cool software like salling sync ( www.salling.com ), instead of being tied to a single computer via iTunes, the ability to get apps from multiple sources without jailbreaking.
The Droid is not an iPhone killer, but it's becoming increasingly obvious that iPhone is not an Android killer either. And that's bad news for WinMo and Palm.
Yes, Android v. iPhone OS is **great** for the consumer - both knock Palm and MS out of the picture, and we know that the competitive nature of both Apple and Google will cause a continuation of great updates from both teams. Apple came in and shook the status quo, and now Google will push Apple towards deeper development.
While many questions remain, Google and Apple are still two companies that i trust quite a bit in terms of handing them my personal data - as mainstream as both have become (Apple slower, over the past 25 years i have been using Macintosh), i think they both still greatly respect their customers.
iPhone has sold primarly through the AT&T/Apple stores whereas Droid sold in Verizon/Bestbuy. So the above article talks only about the Verizon stores sales. As mentioned above, iPhone sold in multiple countries whereas Droid was only in the US.
Droid is sold by Verizon which also had Storm 2 and HTC Eris that released very closely. so the customers had more choice, based on their preference whereas in AT&T stores, its pretty much iPhone alone had the crown.
As with any phone(including the iPhone), Droid has its own advantages and disadvantages. I believe these comparisons are just good for marketing buzz, but at the end of the day, what the phone does for you(that you care about) is the most important thing and I believe Droid has delivered that.
And you can develop for Android on Linux, Windows and yes even a Mac.
Also, I'm interested to here the number of returns on this phone vs. the iPhone, if such information becomes available.
Motorola?s Droid Sales ?Troubling,? Analyst Says
http://www.thestreet.com/print/story/10624624.html
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- It turns out "a lot" is about 100,000 Motorola
Droid phones sold on the first weekend.
Broadpoint AmTech analyst Mark McKechnie estimates that Verizon
sold more than half of the 200,000 Droid phones Motorola supplied to
its stores. All Verizon would say Monday is that it sold "a
lot."
But 100,000 is not a lot, especially for a device that is crucial to the
revival of a fallen Motorola. Nor is 100,000 a lot for Verizon, the No.1
telco hoping to hold that position by stopping customers from
defecting to AT&T for the Apple iPhone.
"This puts the Droid debut in the same category as the Palm Pre, and
that's a little troubling," says Nielsen wireless analyst
Roger Entner.
One has to think that Plan A for Verizon was to have a blockbuster
Droid and an ongoing partnership with Google that
would rival the winning combination of AT&T and Apple.
Plan B will now almost definitely include the iPhone.
"Verizon wants the iPhone and they will get the iPhone, but it certainly
strengthens your negotiation hand if you have a viable alternative,"
says Entner.
AT&T's exclusive iPhone sales agreement with Apple is set to expire
next year and Verizon is widely expected to add the iconic phone to its
lineup.
These Aren't the Droids Verizon Was Looking For
Motorola's deft hand at design is showcased in the slim phone with a
big brilliant touchscreen. But overall, using the phone over the past two
weeks has been a mixed experience.
Motorola Droid.
The big plusses like an excellent Web browser, voice search and Google
Navigation are offset by major minuses like a poor camera, finicky
touchscreen and a persistent Exchange email service glitch.
This marked up scorecard isn't the wholehearted approval Droid needs
from reviewers to give consumers a green light. Instead, consumers
may be waiting for more info or different phones rather than commit to
the Droid for the next two years.
Motorola needs to sell at least one million Droids this year to clear the
low bar set by analysts. With about 100,000 sold so far, and eight
weeks to go, the bar might not be low enough.
Sluggish Droid sales weigh on Motorola shares, which were down 1% to
$8.88 in midday trading Tuesday.
-- Written by Scott Moritz in New York
As it sits, Verizon will probably see a lot of ATT customers come 2010 if the iPhone is actually released from ATT grasps. And being that Verizon has had a couple years to build up their network, it will probably withstand a pretty large number of ex-ATT iPhone customers.
- by jimpjr November 16, 2009 5:17 AM PST
- I personally owned the 3G and bought the 3GS in July and just sold my 3GS and jumped to the Droid, honestly the droid is a better device the iPhone is too iPod-like and seems like a toy(no offense to iphone lovers). iPhone is good tho just the way of the future is Android and Apple is going to lose their Top Spot soon!! sorry Apple/iPhone.
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