ChristopherMarkSmith

“Emails that let you know what they are before you read them.”

This is one of the lines in the email that I received from Verizon after signing up to be notified of the new Motorola Droid phone’s release.  If we want to talk about some silly viral marketing this is it.  If you haven’t seen the iPhone-esque music, followed by iPhone bashing video yet check it out at the bottom of the post.

Motorola Droid will be running Android OS 2.0, full QWERTY keyboard, 5MP camera (with night shots?), user changeable battery, and a “Hi-Def”screen. Through their ad, Verizon also makes it clear that Android is an open platform for developers.

What the hell happened here?

Verizon announced they were ready to start releasing some Android phones about a week and a half ago. This early pop-shot at Apple’s iPhone is, well, sort of awesome and a little confusing.

This move from Verizon is confusing because consumers have made it pretty clear that they want the iPhone on Verizon’s network; it looks like Verizon has other plans though and that involves Android instead. I am all for new competition but I don’t think that this is necessarily the way to do it.

When the iPhone was released, Apple gave it about 6 months of hype, they showed what the phone was about, and created a need for the phone.  Do normal consumers seriously care about a user replaceable battery? An “open platform” for developers? No, I don’t think so.  Many consumers may not even know what this means.  Although this advertisement is unique, confrontational, and dare I say viral (I hate that term) it lacks any substance for standard cell phone consumers.

Consumers want music, web, video, camera, GPS, everything in one phone that is fast and reliable. That’s it. They don’t care about a user replaceable battery…

Imminent fail or imminent takeover?

This has been the question for some time now and may finally be answered after the release of this Android phone. Will Android finally make the splash that it needs too?

The reason that I say this is because Verizon is doing a good job of bashing Apple’s iPhone. November is coming fast, and from a marketing standpoint Verizon may have not given themselves enough time for the hype machine to do it’s job. Since they are bashing the big guy, they are going to have to stand up to the big guy soon, and hopefully, for Verizon and Google’s Android, Droid is the phone to do it.