MOTOBLUNDR?
by John Paczkowski
Posted on September 29, 2009 at 2:42 PM PT
The Cliq, Motorola’s (MOT) first phone based on Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system, is headed to market and will arrive there Nov. 2. Sales to existing customers will begin Oct. 19 and open to the general public Nov. 4.
T-Mobile USA has priced the handset at $199 with a two-year contract, which seems a bit dear considering you can get a 16GB iPhone 3GS for the same price. Given $200 to spend and the choice between Motorola’s first-ever Android device and the first iteration of its Motoblur social networking service or Apple’s (AAPL) third-generation iPhone and second-generation mobile OS and App Store, what would you opt for?
How might your choice change if the Cliq were priced at $150?
[Image credit: LeakDroid]
Comments
Shouldn’t the headline read MOTOBLUNDR? Anyway, iPhone vs. CLIQ, AT&T vs. T-Mobile: Even at $149 for the CLIQ, even as bad as AT&T’s network is, I’d probably go iPhone. T-Mobile’s coverage is just too sparse.
Posted by Stephen Brooks at September 29th, 2009 at 2:50 pmAhh. Good point.
Posted by John Paczkowski at September 29th, 2009 at 3:00 pmGiven that the price of the phone is mouse nuts over the life of a 2-year contract, it is not relevant.
What is meaningful to me is the $50/month delta to upgrade from a cheap Samsung phone to an iPhone.
Posted by Dave Barnes at September 29th, 2009 at 3:15 pmWow Moto does it again!
I cannot believe that they would pull a stunt like this!
I have been completely underwhelmed since the launch of the android. Perhaps mostly by the the android store, as the return policy is ridiculous. Publishers are experiencing return rates of up to 65%.
This is not a quality issue, this is purely a cheapskate issue.
Here is something I have seen first hand:
Bob buys game X on his android, bob plays the game all day.
Bob returns the game later that day and gets a refund.
Bob buys game X on his android, bob plays the game all day.
Bob returns the game later that day and gets a refund.
Please note that Bob actually bought the game and returned it everyday for 3 weeks and never ended up keeping it.
Next up is Java, why oh why oh why did they choose Java? It is antiquated and there is not a developer in the world today that will use the sentence “wow it is so much fun to work with J2ME”.
I was great when it first came out, but so was Vanilla Ice.
Next up the CPU, in the iPhone there are three CPU’s, one specifically dealing with the touch screen.
So what this translates to is that you have a racing game such as Real Racing that is available on the App-Store. You touch the screen to perform a function such as breaking and the entire game with slow down on this moto phone, as it is sharing the CPU across the board.
That just is not fun.
I was pretty stoked when I heard about Android the first time, so it is a real shame. We need vibrant competition in the smart phone space and we are not actually getting it.
MSFT apparently are doing interesting things in WinMo 6.5 and they seem confident about WinMo 7, so perhaps the competition is going to come from there or WebOS, but again this is a java device.
BBerry, could be interesting if they pump some funds into R&D.
Note: I didn’t mention the other OEM’s intentionally.
Posted by Kevin Dent at September 29th, 2009 at 4:59 pmThey could be giving them away and I wouldn’t take one. One either loves the iphone of one doesn’t.
I feel it is the best phone ever made. ATT, not so much, but I’ll give them another year.
Posted by David Owens at September 29th, 2009 at 7:29 pmIf I didn’t already have a smartphone, it would be really hard to talk me out of the $99 iPhone 3G.
Posted by Fred Hamranhansenhansen at September 29th, 2009 at 8:33 pm