Droid Attacks iPhone
By Harry McCracken | Saturday, October 17, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Verizon Wireless, which recently announced it was hopping on the Android smartphone OS bandwagon big time, has started whetting our appetite for its first Android phone. It’s launched a TV ad for the phone, the Droid, and a teaser site. And so far, it’s mostly promoting the phone by bashing the iPhone, with pseudo-Apple text pointing out that “iDont” have a physical keyboard, (third-party) multitasking, a five-megapixel camera, much in the way of customization options, widgets, “open development,” the ability to take photos in the dark, or a removable battery. The Droid (whose name is licensed from Mr. Lucas) presumably has all of the above.
It’s an entertainingly combative ad, and a pretty effective one given that it doesn’t even show the phone (which apparently looks like this). Of course, the fact that the Droid beats the iPhone on a number of spec- and feature-related fronts doesn’t make it a breakthrough. It’s quite common for smartphones to theoretically trump the iPhone in multiple ways, but the iPhone’s level of hardware/software/service integration and the vast quantity of available apps remain unique. No other phone is going to catch up with the iPhone’s software catalog anytime soon, so if I were an Apple competitor, I’d concentrate on trying to vaunt into the same league in terms of integration. Not that that’ll be easy. The Droid arrives next month, so we won’t have to wait long to judge it.
The other interesting question about the Droid commercial is this: Does all its cheeky iPhone-bashing signal that Verizon has no plans to sell the iPhone anytime soon? It not only mocks the phone but mocks Apple in a way that suggests that it doesn’t plan to go into business with it, despite rumors. I took the implied message of the ad as being something like this: “Yes, we know that a lot of people want a Verizon iPhone, but hold on–we’re going to have a smartphone that’s better than an iPhone.”
(Then again, I’m fascinated by this Verizon ad that says a non-Verizon BlackBerry is a paperweight–it might be an effective ad, but it seems like an odd thing to do to BlackBerry maker and Verizon partner RIM.)
Anyhow, here’s the “iDon’t” ad:
18 Comments
Read more:
11 Comments For This Post
7 Trackbacks For This Post
-
girlyassmusic.com » “Verizon And Google’s Android Attack The iPhone” and related posts - 245th Edition Says:
October 18th, 2009 at 2:37 pm[…] Droid Attacks iPhone – Technologizer […]
-
What, Exactly, Does It Mean to Go Google? | Technologizer Says:
October 18th, 2009 at 9:42 pm[…] I wonder whether any of the companies Google now says have gone Google–Genentech, Motorla Mobile Devices, Northwestern University, New York Life, the Onion, Rentokil Initial, Telegraph Media Group, and others–are Search Appliance or Postini customers but not Google Apps users. It’s also worth noting that the first two organizations Google mentions as having Gone Google are ones with deep Google ties: Genentech’s former CEO was a member of Google’s board until last week, and Motorola’s Mobile Devices division is a major Google partner via devices such as the Cliq and Droid. […]
-
Top Posts « WordPress.com Says:
October 19th, 2009 at 5:11 pm[…] Droid Attacks iPhone Verizon Wireless, which recently announced it was hopping on the Android smartphone OS bandwagon big time, has started […] […]
-
Samsung Taunts Apple Says:
November 23rd, 2011 at 10:07 am[…] for the Galaxy S II: It’s a pretty clever ad–certainly more so than most that make fun of Apple–and if it ticks off iPhone owners, that’s apparently OK. In an interview with Steve […]
-
Samsung Taunts Apple on the Phone Front | Roycetec Says:
November 23rd, 2011 at 2:18 pm[…] a pretty clever ad–certainly more so than most that make fun of Apple, and even if its claims about 4G are questionable–and if it ticks off iPhone owners, that’s […]
-
Samsung Taunts Apple on the Phone Front : latestiphoneupdates Says:
November 23rd, 2011 at 2:59 pm[…] a pretty clever ad–certainly more so than most that make fun of Apple, and even if its claims about 4G are questionable–and if it ticks off iPhone owners, that’s […]
-
Samsung Taunts Apple on the Phone Front | Tech Dott - Daily Technology News Magazine Says:
November 23rd, 2011 at 3:36 pm[…] a pretty clever ad–certainly more so than most that make fun of Apple, and even if its claims about 4G are questionable–and if it ticks off iPhone owners, that’s […]
October 18th, 2009 at 2:57 am
lol that’s a funny ad. Pretty effective though.
October 18th, 2009 at 11:09 am
I still like Verizon’s “If the iDoesn’t see it, what does?” ad. I was expecting these anti-Apple ads to come out around the 3G’s time, but better late than never iGuess…
Great, now I’m doing it!
October 18th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Great advert.. The phone will have to be good to dent the iPhone.. but it’s going to happen soon I think.
October 18th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
I can’t wait until Apple sues their butts and all the money they spent is wasted.
It is not correct to claim that the iPhone doesn’t run multiple apps – it does. Several of the other claims are wrong, too.
October 18th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Best response from Apple would be:
iDon’t suck
To be honest, the single thing that needs fixing in the iPhone (well, for me and my iPhone) is no background audio streaming. For everything else, notification and good quality persistence take care of everything else (some people may want background tracking vis-a-vie social networking, so I can see that as a complaint, I just don’t care, and the solution I mention works for that as well).
Anyway, the point is that with an < 30 second jailbreak, and then the easy install of backgrounder, a free app, I get the much valued "background app" and now can stream all my audio apps while doing other stuff on the iPhone. Other than that, all other complaints are really device complaints, and you can always have devices with more "features". There are plenty of phones with more "features" then iPhones. That does not really mean much.
Not really trying to apologize for the iPhone, since Apple needs to open up the phone to 3rd party background tasks. If they do, I doubt they ever will for the 2G and 3G and start with the 3Gs (twice as much RAM, providing as much as 5 X more RAM for applications).
October 18th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
” The phone will have to be good to dent the iPhone..”
It won’t be; Verizon always cripples their phones.
October 18th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
The only problem with the ad is most of the points either have no meaning to, well, most anyone (“open development” is industry buzz-speak and quite frankly hasn’t hurt the iPhone, never mind the relative nature of what that really means). And the other points just don’t matter (Widgets??? Really???). IPhone’s success already disproves most of the commercial.
They would do better focusing on what the Droid phone is rather than what the iPhone “isn’t”. When you define yourself against something else’s negative, you are at the mercy of the “other” and what it is or isn’t. Even Apple tends to make that mistake in the Mac/PC ads. They also do a better job of turning it around to show what that means to the customer.
Joe
October 19th, 2009 at 6:47 am
That is an AWFUL ad.
It may use the term “iDroid”. But that term doesn’t necessarily mean iPhone.
If anything, it is attacking itself – which is not necessarily a phone.
When it points out a missing feature, what is interesting is that that feature isn’t important to users of the iPhone. This is why I did not associate the ad with the iPhone at all.
October 30th, 2009 at 6:54 am
You should read this :
http://www.businessinsider.com/verizon-and-googles-2009-10
November 4th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
When a device has to attack other phones… and tells very little about itself… that’s a very bad sign.
Why can’t the Droid stand on its own?
November 4th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
This is going to be great, at least for the consumer. But this phone have to be really good to compete with iPhone. They should have done this long time ago.