Its Finally D-Day... "D" as in DROID!

Today, November 6, is the day that Verizon is releasing the Motorola DROID and directly targeting the tremendous growth of the Apple iPhone with AT&T. Verizon has been preparing for this day with a heavy offensive of ads targeting the weakness's of AT&T's 3G network, as well as areas of feature weakness in the iPhone. Can Verizon slow down the iPhone? Time will tell, but I believe this is gearing up to be quite a battle.

So how did this start? Motorola has been a mainstay in the mobile handset space for many years. They have traditionally had heavy competition from Nokia, Samsung, and other traditional device manufacturers. The PDAPhone (or Smartphone) market, has been largely a small niche play for the carriers, and Palm, Microsoft (mostly with HTC), and RIM ruled. And then like a ghost in the night, Apple showed up and legitimized the PDAPhone space taking a huge share of the market... likely pent up demand that wasn't techie enough to play on the existing devices.

Apple released the iPhone in mid-2007 with much fanfare, but with a very unusual approach. Apple had zero experience in the mobile and wireless space, and it would seem an impossibility that it could have success when competitors that had been in the market for years struggled to keep up (Palm, for example). And rather than roll out the iPhone on all carriers globally, Apple decided on an exclusive marketing agreement with AT&T. They drew much criticism on this move, and many thought this would really hurt Apple's entry into the market. There were many doubters, but Apple proved them all wrong by knocking the ball out of the park with the iPhone. Prior to the iPhone, you had to compare PDAPhone marketshare with other PDAPhones... the total combined footprint was simply too small to make a difference in the handset market. But now Apple has captured double digit share of the market, selling only PDAPhones.

Apple was able to do with the iPhone, what they did with the iPod in years past. There were already MP3 players on the market, but they put together a whole solution for their customers that was simple and "just worked". Apple greatly simplified the whole process of adding applications to the device with their Application Store (which hit 100K applications this month), they raised the bar significantly with web browsing, and they delivered the core functions that consumers really wanted, without creating the instability that often plagued other platforms like Windows Mobile devices. For some reason, the mainstream media seemed to think that the functions of the iPhone were breakthrough... new capabilities that had never been seen before. The reality, as we clearly know at PDAPhoneHome, is that the iPhone does nothing that couldn't be done 5 or 6 years earlier... but it did it all much better and much easier. The iPhone was a cohesive polished entry into a crazy disjointed market. Apple defined what it took to be successful with PDAPhones.

In the two plus years since the iPhone was released, there have been several attempts to knock it off its pedestal. The traditional players have responded... RIM, Palm, and Microsoft (mostly with HTC) have released devices designed to mimic the iPhone. The first was the HTC Touch, which tried to copy some of the gestures and user interface elements, but in the end you were still dealing with the same Windows Mobile stylus interface under the covers. Palm tried a total redo with their departure from Palm OS and introduction of the Palm Pre running WebOS. RIM has pulled out the Storm, and even the traditional handset makers have released devices that look strikingly similar to the iPhone. My daughter has a Samsung device that from a distance you'd swear is an iPhone, yet its just a regular mobile phone.

And today... the first serious threat to the iPhone has arrived - the Motorola DROID. Motorola, teaming with Verizon, has directly targeted all the perceived weaknesses of the iPhone and produced a remarkable device. The key sticking points that iPhone fans have complained about are all covered - integrated slider keyboard, multitasking applications, and tethering (the iPhone can tether, but AT&T has still not delivered it on its network). And from an improvement standpoint, the DROID has longer rated talk time (6.4hr vs. 5hr), a better camera (5.0 mp vs. 3.0 mp), and one very, very impressive free turn-by-turn navigation program, courtesy of Google. But the biggest thing that the DROID has going for it, for many users, is that it runs on the Verizon network. Verizon has been aggressively going after this point in their latest marketing, by copying Apple's "There's an app for that" campaign with Verizon's "There's a map for that" response. In their ads, they compare Verizon's 3G coverage with AT&T's 3G map. AT&T has now sued Verizon for misleading ads, but as of last night the ads were still running frequently here.

Will this be enough? Will the combined Verizon/Motorola/Google play be enough to slow down the iPhone? Its really hard to say at this point. Early reports indicate that the DROID is an impressive device. But will it slow iPhone migration, or will it chip more into other competitors (RIM, Palm, etc.) and pull additional folks from the traditional handset ranks. I believe it will be a combination of these. I don't think that the DROID is going to significantly slow down the iPhone at this point. Apple has a finely tuned model and a 2 year head start on the Android platform. It has the benefit of complete control of its solution, which is how its alway competed. Android is going to be somewhat disjointed because its an open source platform and each vendor will be tweaking it. Without total control, there are always going to be glitches... and glitches frustrate the non-geek users. Verizon is even doubling down by oddly releasing a second Android device today as well - the HTC Droid Era.

Apple has a serious head start in getting the iPhone to work within the enterprise. RIM still rules this space, but Apple is making strong inroads. I am just now starting to use my iPhone with Lotus Notes Traveler and Lotus iNotes Ultralite. There is no timeline for when Android will be able to deliver this type of capability, so this will slow adoption for business users.

This is a great time to be following the PDAPhone market. Never has the competition been so finely tuned and mature. Its no longer good enough to have a good feature list in your handset. Now you have to have a stable of applications, a seamless way to get them to the device, and strong integration of the total solution. Even simple things such as the ability to work with iTunes are proving to be an achilles heal for competitors like Palm's Pre. But Android being open source can pull the power of a large community to bear on the effort to topple Apple's dominance. This is not unfamiliar ground for Apple though... they are used to this in the desktop space, and yet they continue to grow and outshine the masses of competitors year after year.

This is going to get interesting! Join in on the discussion about the DROID in our DROID Forum... with a great review already running by one of our team members - http://pdaphonehome.com/forums/motor...11-5-09-a.html