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Google-Based Droid Phone Launches Into Market

Posted on: Friday, 6 November 2009, 06:05 CST

The much anticipated Motorola Droid smart phone his set to make its debut on US markets on Friday. 

With the Droid — one of the first of what is anticipated to be a veritable tsunami of smart phones equipped with a Google-designed open-source operating system — Motorola hopes to give Apple’s iPhone and Research In Motion’s Blackberry series a run for their money.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently commented that the world was on the brink of witnessing an “explosion” in the number of smart phones using their Android operating system.

And a number of market analysts agree with Schmidt’s prediction.

Gartner, a firm that tracks and forecasts market trends, says that they expect to see at least 40 new Android-based phones appear on the market in the coming year.  The firm has also ventured the bold prediction that these Google-friendly phones will push their way to second place in overall cell phone sales by the end of 2012.

“In a few years Android will be the second most popular smart phone, running neck-and-neck with Apple,” Gartner analyst Van Baker told AFP on Thursday.

While Apple’s iPhone has been the rockstar of the smart phone world since it first appeared in 2007, Motorola’s Droid has been garnering impressive reviews from a variety of tech experts and websites.

Though Taiwanese company HTC was the first to debut an Android phone to mixed reviews in autumn of 2008 and a few others have tried their hand as well, critics are already hailing the Droid as the best Android-based device yet created.

Verizon Wireless — which is currently the only mobile carrier providing service for the Droid — recently teamed up with Google to launch a tantalizing television ad campaign featuring stealth jets dropping metal pods from flight which then slam like meteorites into the landscape below.   As various people gather around to inspect the craters, we catch a brief glimpse of the Droid device emerging from the pod followed by the message “drop date 11.06.2009.”

Both Motorola and Verizon are hopeful that the new smart phone will give their slumping US market shares a much needed bump.

While experts predict that the Droid may do serious damage to Blackberry’s market share, possibly even bumping it out of its tenuous second place position, they say there is little chance that the new gadget will dethrone the iPhone.

“It’s not an iPhone killer,” said Gartner vice president of mobile computing Ken Dulaney definitively.

“This is really about changing the mix at Verizon. It will be some attack on RIM [Blackberry producer Research In Motion].”

Though Blackberry is currently Verizon’s most popular smart phone, the addition of Droid to the provider’s repertoire will give their customers an enticing and novel alternative that may prove difficult to resist.

In the US iPhones remain the exclusive territory of mobile monolith AT&T, which at the moment has no plans to introduce Android-based phones to its network.

“Droid is not going to draw anyone away from AT&T to Verizon,” explained Dulaney. “It will keep people at Verizon from going to AT&T and keep some people from going to Blackberry.”

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On the Net:

• Motorola Droid
• Android

Source: RedOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

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