Oh Moto, how you wish to be relevant again. I'm sure anyone in the U.S. during the 2000's either owned a RAZR or saw an advertisement for it. The $300 RAZR ushered in the new thin metallic phone style that proved a phone could look great and fit in the pocket easily. From it's debut in 2004 to it's death in 2008 the RAZR sold a still standing record of 130 million units. The unbelievable success of the RAZR earned Motorola the top spot in mobile sales and billions of dollars in revenue. Well, after being buried for a few years Moto has decided to resurrect the name and try to move up in sales numbers again.
She still looks pretty and can be bought on eBay for about $20
From 2006-2008 Moto tried it's best to create a successor to the original RAZR packing more memory, bigger screens, and better cameras. Because of these slight tweaks Moto would try to increase prices as high as $800 only to have to slash them in half due to poor sales, software glitches, and hardware failure. Also during this time, Apple released the iPhone and showed the world you have to make one great model and don't mess with it.
Would you pay $800 for this? Neither would anyone else, they cut the price to $250
Move to 2009 and the debut of the Droid. Verizon and Motorola create a partnership and a $billion ad campaign that showed the world the iPhone was not the only smartphone worth having. Although the Droid was very successful, Moto still was not making enough revenue and the company actually split into two divisions. Since then the mobile division of Motorola has been spewing out Droids like Hasbro spews out Transformer toys.
I am now going to list to you all the Motorola Android devices that have been produced with the reasons for making them.
Droid (first Moto Android device)
Droid Pro (portrait QWERTY)
Droid 2 (1GHz processor)
Citrus (economy device)Droid X (4.3" screen)
Droid X2 (dual-core processor)
Droid 3 (1080p camera/front facing camera)
Droid Bionic (LTE)
Triumph (Droid X non-Verizon)
Titanium (better version of i1)
Photon (WiMax 4G)
Atrix (dual-core w/ laptop dock)
i886 (basic Android phone w/number pad) *pictured right*
XPRT (Droid Pro for non-Verizon)
Cliq (slide out keyboard, cheaper than Droid)
Cliq2 (slider w/ FM radio)
Flipout (rotating keyboard)
Flipside (optical navigation touchpad)
Charm (large portrait QWERTY)
Defy (DLNA, thin bezel)
Milestone (Droid for non-Verizon)
i1 (Nextel)
These are just Android devices, I am not including the dozen or so basic phones they have created. Just like in 2007 when Moto tried to flood the market with different versions of the RAZR, they are doing it again in 2011 with the Droid.
So now it looks like for 2012 Moto in all it's wisdom has decided to bring together the Droid RAZR. My prediction is that the Droid RAZR will mark the end of the line for Motorola. The big difference between the Droid RAZR and the Droid Bionic will be a Super AMOLED qHD resolution display. That's a screen produced by Samsung, it boasts a 960 x 540 display resolution, and produces true blacks helping reduce battery consumption. While I believe this is a nice screen bump for Moto, and it should help then thin the model a little, it is not a huge difference from what they already have in the Bionic. Here are some unimpressive leaked photos courtesy of the Verge.
Anyone impressed?
So Motorola I urge you to take my advice because I hate seeing an American company lose market share in this economy. Take a hint from Apple and just make one kick ass device for all carriers to enjoy. Refine it and test the hell out of it, make sure it is reliable. Being the company that created the cell phone I want you to succeed. Bringing the RAZR back will not make you relevant again. You will keep playing catch up to Apple, Samsung, and HTC who are all making better sales profits than you.
