100,000 Droids Dropped During First Weekend
by John Paczkowski
Posted on November 10, 2009 at 7:36 AM PT
The Droid invasion appears to be going according to plan. Motorola’s new Android-based handset arrived at Verizon Wireless stores last Friday and analysts say it’s selling quite well.
Indeed, Broadpoint AmTech analyst Mark McKechnie estimates Verizon (VZ) sold about 100,000 Droids in its first weekend. McKechnie believes the carrier had about 200,000 units on-hand at launch, and most stores he surveyed had sold at least half of their stock over the weekend.
That’s not nearly the one million iPhones Apple (AAPL) sold during the first weekend of its latest model debut, but it’s impressive nonetheless. Certainly, Motorola (MOT) hasn’t moved that many handsets in so short a period in a very long time–if ever.
“I see the first few days as encouraging,” McKechnie told Bloomberg. “There seems to be pretty good demand–they’ve taken the right steps and picked a good partner with Google on the Android side.”
Citigroup (C) analyst Jim Suva agreed, noting that Droid doesn’t require iPhone-like sales to be successful. Said Suva: “Although the press is stating the Droid launch was not as successful as the iPhone launch, we don’t believe investors expected an iPhone-like launch, but rather a first step in a cadence of products that will help bring Motorola’s handsets out of the death spiral experienced during the past three years.”
Then there was this from RBC’s Mark Sue, who declared that anyone expecting a launch reminiscent of the iPhone’s was expecting too much: “Motorola’s Droid landed at Verizon and while the new device is not the be all and end all for Motorola it’s an important beginning for a company that sorely missed out of a growing market,” he wrote. “There were no around-the-block lines of consumers waiting to get their hands on a Motorola Droid, yet investors shouldn’t expect them either. We’re looking for a steady ramp instead towards our estimate of approximately 1M units in 4Q09.”
Comments
I don’t see the Google backed device as being an attempt at market domination so much as a line in the sand for the industry saying: If you can’t or won’t provide devices that work with open APIs (such as ours) then we will.
Apple straddles the fence on notions such as openness and by comparison with companies in the Northwest plays the role of “good guy”.
Existence and success of Android will hopefully move Apple, and others more in that direction.
Posted by Mac Beach at November 10th, 2009 at 10:48 am> Apple straddles the fence
> on notions such as openness
No, they provide both sides of the fence. There are 2 independent app platforms on iPhone: proprietary CocoaTouch and open HTML5. They’re like a yin yang. For example, CocoaTouch requires approval, HTML5 does not. When Google Voice was not approved for App Store (CocoaTouch) Google said they would release an HTML5 version that will run on the iPhone anyway.
Note that the HTML5 Google Voice won’t run on any Microsoft system, which features a closed IE Web app API instead of open HTML5.
> Existence and success of
> Android will hopefully
> move Apple, and others
> more in that direction.
In spite of the fact that Apple’s native app platform leads the industry, their Web app platform also leads the industry. For example, Web apps have hardware accelerated graphics, CSS3 animations, and local storage on iPhone. Droid is Verizon’s first phone with an HTML5 browser, 3 years after iPhone/AT&T, so Apple is moving Verizon in the right direction.
Posted by Fred Hamranhansenhansen at November 10th, 2009 at 5:19 pmTo put these Droid numbers in perspective, on the first day selling the iPhone in the UK, where you could get the iPhone on the O2 network for the past 3 years, Orange sold more than 30,000 iPhones. The UK has about 60 million people to the USA’s roughly 300 million. Not really a blow out for Droid. Providing Google continues to put dev effort in, Android will play a useful role in allowing hardware phone makers to have a product to compete against Apple but Apple’s somewhat closed system will always prove an advantage to the vast number of consumers even as tech geeks complain about lack of open platform and Apple’s sometimes heavy handed and iconoclastic approach on apps, battery, etc. All in all, good implementations of Android will spur Apple to push their development which is a good thing for all.
Posted by Eric Perlberg at November 11th, 2009 at 3:07 am