Why Motorola's Droid Is a Sure-Fire Hit: Analysis

• Motorola
• Android
• Google
• cellphones
• smartphones
• Palm
• iPhone
• Verizon

Maybe the stakes are just higher now, but it seems like every major cellphone launch these days is billed as a "Do or Die" proposition—a last hope for a once-glorious company trying to remain relevant in a quickly changing technological landscape where the mindshare and marketshare are increasingly dominated by a single device (that would be the iPhone).

We most recently saw this with the Palm Pre (both Palm and Sprint’s bottom-of-the-ninth double-down play), and now, we see it with the Motorola Droid.

It’s hard to overstate how important the Droid is to Motorola, as well as to its carrier, Verizon.

Motorola, of course, is a once-thriving handset-maker that rode the success of classic phones such as the StarTAC and Razr to marketplace dominance. However, in recent years, the company has found itself woefully unprepared to succeed in a post-iPhone world, and has been unable to produce a blockbuster handset since the Razr’s release five years ago.

For Motorola, the Droid, which runs on Google’s Android operating system, is a chance for a major revival. And likewise, taking cues from the Palm Pre’s kitchen-sink approach to features (you can almost imagine the engineers sitting around a table, deciding to pack in every little thing they could), Motorola has produced a phone that is a massive improvement over anything else the manufacturer has produced since, well, ever.

The Droid is one of the most solid and impressive phones we’ve ever felt (and one of the heaviest—in a good way). It has a decent 5-megapixel camera, a slide-out keyboard (despite being just a hair thicker than the iPhone), one of the biggest and best phone screens we’ve ever seen (at 3.7 inches, it’s also bigger than the iPhone’s 3.5-inch screen), and, most remarkable of all, completely free turn-by-turn GPS navigation courtesy of Google (a feature that caused TomTom and Garmin stocks to nosedive overnight).

Is it better than the iPhone? No. Its interface isn’t quite as logical and smooth, and Android doesn’t have nearly as many applications as Apple’s App Store. But it could be the better choice for certain customers—namely, those who are fed up with the failings of AT&T’s network, who demand a keyboard or who plan on using the phone as a car-based GPS. And it’s the best phone we reasonably could have expected from Motorola at this time.

But the real ace in the hole—and the reason the phone will be a sure-fire hit—is that it runs on Verizon’s network—a network with an enormous supply of customers who love its blazing signal speeds and reliable signal strength, but yearn for a consumer-friendly touchscreen smartphone.

This desire is why Verizon could sell enough units of the original BlackBerry Storm to consider the phone a hit, despite the fact that it was a barely usable mess of bugs when it first came out. There is quite simply an incredible amount of pent-up demand for a device that stacks up against the iPhone. And it doesn’t hurt that Verizon is reportedly prepared to unleash a massive marketing avalanche to promote the new device.

So, yes, the phone is a good device. And, yes, it will sell well. The real question: Does the Droid represent a seismic shift for Motorola, or is it merely a stay of execution?

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