Verizon’s upcoming phone Driod has been advertised to compete with Apple’s iPhone. Verizon’s teaser preview with a large media buy has stirred up some hype for the phone. If anything, it has raised some eye brows about some of the phone’s claims to have and exceed the Apple iPhone’s capabilities. Check out the ad below to see what I mean.
Now some have said this is not an attack on the iPhone. The ad seems obvious to me as the “idont” comment throughout the ad is targeted to the i in “iPhone”. Verizon’s Web site for the Driod phone does not have much detail and adds little to the hype generated by the advertisement.
The iPhone Blog recently wrote about “Verizon Attack Ads — Claim iPhone iDoesn’t do What Android 2.0 Droid Does.” In the blog Rene Richie counters each point that the Driod ad raises.
For example, “iDon’t run simultaneous apps: Again, it does. The iPhone can run iPod, Email, Phone, Messages, App Store/iTunes downloads, Quicktime streams, and other functions in the background with full multitasking. Apple restricts two or more 3rd party apps from running at the same time, but that’s obviously too subtle a difference for Verizon.”
From Daring Fireball, “Droid” is going to be a Verizon-owned brand. It’s purportedly a Motorola-manufactured phone, but Verizon is the licensee of the “Droid” trademark. (Which name, by the way, strikes me as the perfect name for an Android OS phone — sort of implicitly establishes it as the Android phone.) That’s the big thing. Verizon doesn’t see itself as a mere carrier for other companies’ phones. It sees itself as being bigger than the phones. It’s Verizon-vs.-Apple in this spot, not Verizon-vs.-AT&T.
So that is some of the hype going on between Verizon’s Droid and the Apple iPhone. Personally, I think the hype is all hot air. My bet is the phone will launch and ultimately fall short of the advertised claims. The iPhone with all it’s applications is just to hard to beat!
Cheers,
Adam Faragalli
