I Can Hear Something Now
November 22nd, 2009 - 2:32 pm
Motorola’s Droid — the latest in a long line of “iPhone killers” — is now available for almost half off from Dell. This, just weeks after it was introduced.
Is Motorola desperate for market share, or to move units, or both?
I love my droid.
Steve –
That’s what I don’t understand. The Droid has gotten great reviews from pretty much everybody (well, except for the Android App Store, but that has nothing to do with Motorola).
My son loves his. It has a cool ap that allows you to figure out where on the other side of the world the sun is when it’s dark, and has a great night sky ap for finding constellations where you are. I mean, it’s a phone!
Maybe it’s Verizon, not Motorola, who’s after market share? After all, that special price comes with a two-year contract.
I just remembered my son’s friends, who are very technology-forward, camped out to get iPhones, and in a very short time the price had dropped by 50% and they were rather peeved.
Casey — Good point.
Math Mom — not quite. Five months after being introduced iPhone prices dropped 20%-25%, depending on the model. And they were still just about the most expensive phones you could buy.
Motorola has chopped the price on Droid by over 40% — which undercuts the cheapest 3GS iPhone by, well, 40%.
As a consumer, I’m all in favor of price cuts. But rarely does a manufacturer sacrifice margins that big, just a month after release — unless they’ve severely overestimated demand or desperately need to maintain (or gain) market share.
Of course, if Verizon has made the cuts, as Casey suggested, that could mean something else.
IMO, the market for such phones is already saturated (at least for the current economic environment). The majority of people who want and can afford such features and services is already tied up, many of them in two year commitments. And the issue of giving up a familiar user interface isn’t to be overlooked.
So Moto might very well have the greatest phone with the coolest apps. But they have little choice but to buy their way into the market now. I suspect they tested the waters with the higher price, but switched to Plan B when they saw folks weren’t beating a path to their door.
I’m well within the market for an iPhone or Droid, but the ongoing expense of a calling plan to support all the features that make the device so inviting — not so much.
Of course, I am a very little way into a two-year contract myself so switching to Verizon for a Droid is out of the question anyway.
Ironically, had the price of a Droid been 40% lower on initial release, the sales volume might have been even less than it was; the people at whom such initial releases are targeted would have snubbed it as “too cheap.”
Maybe they’re afraid that when the HTC Dragon comes out it’ll steal the Droid’s thunder? I was about to get a Droid and then decided to wait in case I liked the Dragon (or Passion… the rumors are a little confusing) better.
iPhone has a halfway decent app platform, but no distribution path other than the Apple-controlled AppStore. And it’s locked to AT&T.
‘roid got no decent nothing (what, proprietary flavor of Java?) and is locked to Verizon. At least the new one is. So far.
Me, I’m sitting here waiting for N900 to come out. At least it has an open platform and you can distribute open source right and left. To all three other units that are sure to be out there.
Actually, Max, Verizon apparently hopes to become a one-stop shopping mall for communications.
They offer land-line service, wireless, and Wifi. They even offer plans which include wireless broadband access to the internet. Yes, I know, they aren’t the only ones, but there may be a deliberate plan at work.
There’s a countable number of reports out there that other companies (and countries) are scrambling to issue a version of the ‘Droid, so is Verizon trying to establish not just market share, but brand identity?
It should be noted that the dell mobility store is actually a Simplexity store. Basically Simplexity sells the phones at a deeper subsidizes the phones even more, at a cost of a more stern contract. You Cant even change your contract with Simplexity.
Basically Verizon, Motorola isnt selling the phone, Simplexity is.
Or that’s what I read….