The Misfit Toys ad was more effective...
Posted on 12/04/2009 12:43:52 PM PST by Swordmaker
Verizon has launched a new ad for the Motorola Droid, "Pretty."
Electronista reports, "The new spot directly attacks the iPhone and calls Apple's handset a 'digitally clueless pageant queen,' making fun of its focus on style and even mocking the glass case Apple used to display the phone at its launch in 2007."
MacDailyNews Take: Focus on style? Just because iPhone has style, doesn't mean that Apple focuses on it. If anything, Apple focuses on the apps available for iPhone. Something with which, along with style, the brick heavy Droid simply cannot compete.
Electronista continues, "It meanwhile thrives on the Droid's powerful, masculine image and, among other things, suggests that the smartphone is 'racehorse duct-taped to a Scud missile fast.'"
Direct link via YouTube here.
Full article here.
"Verizon tonight cut deep by launching a new ad for the Motorola Droid," Electronista reports.
"The new spot directly attacks the iPhone and calls Apple's handset a 'digitally clueless pageant queen,' making fun of its focus on style and even mocking the glass case Apple used to display the phone at its launch in 2007," Electronista reports.
MacDailyNews Take: If Verizon has decided that the best way to compete with iPhone is to weakly try and fail to emasculate it, then Verizon is clueless, desperate, fearful, and stupid.
Have Small Penis Syndrome? Get a Motorola Droid from Verizon!
Besides Verizon's and Motorola's obvious issues, this is really a poor marketing strategy. The geniuses at Verizon are basically saying, "Hey, you 51% of the U.S. population who are female, these aren't the Droids you're looking for." What's next, Verizon, marketing Droid only to blue collar men? Way to minimize your own addressable market, dummies. By the way, you 51% of the U.S. population who are female plus all of the men who can recognize a complete platform with a vibrant ecosystem vs. yet another device fighting over Apple's table scraps in the quest to become the SanDisk of smartphones, the iPhone 3GS is for you. The "S" is for speed.
Unless Verizon is looking to deliver highly-targeted Viagra and Enzyte ads, the only other thing we can think of is that maybe Verizon subconsciously wants Droid to fail, so they'll be forced to finally wake up, forget about their craptastic V-Cast and dreams of other proprietary over-priced, under-featured services, and sign on Steve Jobs' dotted line like they should have in the first place.
Apple should, and likely will, ignore these ads, since they're not stupid like Microsoft.
And, a Scud missile is an inaccurate Soviet Cold War-era lumbering piece of junk deployed by North Korea, Syria, Sadam Hussein's Iraq, and other tremendous examples of technologically-advanced global powerhouses. In other words, when a Scud doesn't blow up on the pad, meander off-course, or disintegrate in flight, it's slow. And duct-taping a 1,200 lb. horse to it certainly isn't going to make it any faster.
And what devices are you using with ATT? Their problem seems to be that some of the handsets they sell are really stinkers. The iPhone isn’t, but there have been some software updates to it that can improve it immensely.
We’ve got literally thousands of hours in field tests of the major wireless networks. None are perfect, but the one with the most coverage is, still, ATT.
pick your poison.
AT&T is important for those going overseas a lot etc., that’s for sure.
The iPhone could from the day they released the 3G model.
The multiple app thing is also why the brick they call the Droid has terrible battery life, Tradeoffs for everything, and you don’t find Droid chargers everywhere.
Finally, the ‘new standard’ is the same one ATT will be upgrading to, 4G LTE. Thing is.... ATT’s 3G phones will be compatible with it. Verizon’s 3G phones won’t.
And, of course, the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, set a disturbing precedent - seems that the G1 owners are going to be shafted, Android 2 won’t run on their hardware with a factory install. Which extrapolated, means that the Droid probably will be unable to run Android 3....
Meanwhile, my 2.5G original iPhone, handed down to my subordinate, is happily running iPhone OS 3. :D
I didn’t think “racehorse duct-taped to a Scud” was a very flattering comparison.
Now tell me Sprint missile speed with Tomahawk accuracy and I’ll be impressed.
In the same boat. I want a Droid if I can’t get the iPhone.
You can have my iPhone when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers...
I'm not using any devices with ATT. Fortunately I knew beforehand that there was no ATT reception here. Everybody that has ever come to my home and has ATT gets zero reception. Does not matter what handset they are using they get nothing. Long list too. From the construction manager who oversaw the building of my house, to plumbers, deliverymen, my daugher, son, cousin. Not one of them can get a signal where I live...and I am in Maryland, not exactly out in the boondox.
As for my cabin in north central PA, when I had the cabin built the company that sold the location said the only coverage there was Verizon. When checking the ATT website they state that coverage in that area is provided by a independent partner and if used too often they reserve the right to cancel your service.
Bottom line...in both cases..no choice. Verizon.
I have a family member who travels extensively in the US and outlying areas, including going into the boonies, and his Verizon phone always gets reception where the others on the crew are dead with AT&T.
Too bad, he’d like to have an iPhone.
AT&T has a strong network in Texas, so I could see that. It wasn’t very strong back home when I moved to TX from Kansas because Alltel owned everything.
Probably part of the difference.
“There simply isn’t multiplexing ability and there’s not enough bandwidth on their network.”
Who told you this?
Good gravy, why would anyone care if their phone is insulted by a company that sells other phones?
Taking this stuff personally and getting worked up about it (uh uuuuhhhh, ma phones is betterrrrr) is the stuff of 5th grade recess.
I can think of an instance here in TX where AT&T was better.
We went to the Frio River earlier in the year with my wife’s parents. They have AT&T. They had great service, while we had zero bars starting about 30 minutes out.
It was awful.
Droid commercials are funny. I’m not going to buy one, don’t need a cellphone, but I like the commercials.
Interesting.
“You can’t be on the internet while placing a phone call with Verizon because of the CDMA network.”
This is a hardware limitation, not a network limitation......most phones don’t support this because they are not designed to do it.
The Misfit Toys ad was more effective...
The AT&T 3G is twice as fast as Verizon's 3G and AT&Ts 2.5G which kicks in when the 3G is not available covers almost as much area and is faster than Verizon's slowest acceptable 3G speed.
Exactly two years ago, I travelled across the southern US from Southern Indiana through Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and up the Central Valley of California to Stockton and had only five minutes of no signal from AT&T on my iPhone. Even in areas, where the coverage map above shows there should be no coverage, I had at least one bar and got coverage. The five minutes of no coverage occurred when I was at the extreme western border area of New Mexico on Interstate 40. That was all 2.5G EDGE all the way and it loaded web pages at about four to five times faster than dial-up speeds. Although not as fast as 3G, still very useable.
I find it very revealing that almost every time someone makes these somewhat disparaging comparison remarks, they spell the name of Apple's phone with a hyphen: "I-phone"—as you just did. Most iPhone owners would not make that mistake. Nor would they be too worried about the lack of 3G coverage because the iPhone seamlessly switches between 3G, EDGE, or WIFI as needed without the user even noticing...
Apple's first choice for the iPhone was Verizon... Verizon turned them down, insisting on total control of the features of the iPhone and ala carte pricing of fundtions. Apple would not agree to that. Verizon also refused to modify their network to support visual voice mail. AT&T agreed to what Apple wanted to do.
I’m guessing the iPhone doesn’t come to Verizon until they are on LTE with AT&T and the rest of the world.
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