Will People Line Up For The Motorola Droid On Friday?

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Will People Line Up For The Motorola Droid On Friday?

Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) has a big marketing splash planned for Friday when the highly anticipated Motorola Droid first goes on sale. The blitz includes extending store hours, in-store demos and a big interactive event in New York’s Time Square called, “DROID Does Times Square.”

Several positive reviews have hyped the $200 phone as the biggest iPhone contender currently on the market, but it’s unclear how well it will ultimately be received by consumers. Will it be a true competitor to Apple’s iPhone? Will people line up at 7 a.m. to buy one? If not the Droid, maybe consumers will flock to other smartphones? Verizon is rumored to release 15 new phones, mostly smartphones, including the BlackBerry Storm2 before the end of December, reports Boy Genius.

At least for the Droid, Verizon is pulling all the stops. On Friday, more than 2,000 stores will open at 7 or 8 a.m. for the launch. In-store demonstrations will teach customers about the phone’s capabilities, and the “DROID Does Times Square” will include large digital billboards on the NASDAQ and Reuters signs. Starting Friday, the billboards will instruct people to call 1-888-376-4336 to search for their favorite restaurants, plays, movies or stores nearby. The results will be displayed on the billboards using Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Maps. The billboards will be active during certain times of the day from Nov. 6 to Nov. 28. On Nov. 6, you can watch the results online at www.droiddoes.com/timessquare.

Tricia Duryee

@triciad Nov 3, 2009 12:45 PM ET

Photo: Verizon Wireless

Posted In: Advertising, Marketing, Mobile, Companies, Google, Android, Motorola, Verizon

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jeff Spirer

It's an indication of kook aid drinking when something in the market is positioned as new. Voice nav has been available on Windows Mobile devices for a while. Definitely not a game- changer.

More apps are not that useful, there are plenty already. Discoverability is far more important now than "more."

As a long- time consumer marketer, among other things, I haven't heard anything compelling, just more technoid stuff. RISC vs CISC, Linux on the desktop, Open Office, open mobile platform - a long list of techie stuff that don't appeal to consumers.

Slash

I will be standing in line, since my BB died and I'm suffering through life with my calls forward to my iPhone. The DROID will be much better than the iPhone for productivity. For apps? We'll see.

Droider

@ Spirer. Who do you think the tech community are creating the apps for? The open OS is most certainly in the consumers interest because it means more apps. It is completely free for developers to get the code develop apps…for consumers, not for themselves. 16M colors, 400,000 pixels is basically an HD TV. So I would say the screen is a game changer. Latitude app and turn-by-turn voice directions using GoogleMaps is not a tweak, its a first.

Motocliq

100% sure there will be lines waiting to get the Droid on Friday. All Droids in stock will be sold during the first week and Mot will need to ship more the Verizon stores.

jeff Spirer

These are things that interest techies, not consumers. The problem with all the Android hype is that it is from the tech community. Consumers have a very different approach and set of interests. No consumer cares about "open operating system." Or open anything. They want stuff that is good and works. The screen isn't a game changer either, and everything else is tweaks on features widely available. Nothing about this phone screams "new."

Droider

I beg to differ. Game Changer = 3.7" 850 x 480 touch screen, Open operating system, highly customizeable UI, virtual and physical QWERTY, 5x more 3G coverage, 5MP camera, 8 web browers at a time, 6 apps/widgets at a time