Has Verizon lost all hope of gaining access to Apple’s profitable iPhone? That seems to be the message in the aftermath of the carrier’s advertising blitz promoting the upcoming release of the Motorola-built Droid cellphone using Google’s Android 2.0 operating software.
Verizon takes dead aim at the iPhone with its “iDon’t Droid” advertising campaign kicked off over the weekend:
iDon’t have a real keyboard
iDon’t run simultaneous apps
iDon’t take night shots
iDon’t allow open development
iDon’t customize
iDon’t run widgets
iDon’t have interchangeable batteries
Everything iDon’t
DROID DOES
Unsaid but very clear is that the commercial burns any bridges Verizon might have had to offer the iPhone.
“The iPhone isn’t going on Verizon…neither is any Apple product (tablet?). Not for the foreseeable future anyway,” according to Macworld. “This “iDon’t” commercial signals the end of that speculation.”
The Motorola Droid includes a physical keyboard, multitasking, widgets, 3.5-inch 854×480-pixel capacitive touch screen, 5-megapixel still camera, video camera, Wi-Fi, GPS and 3.5mm headphone jack.
The device, which many view as Motorola’s Sholes device unearthed in June, will reportedly use Google’s new Android 2.0 software and go head-to-head against the iPhone in November.
Verizon’s actions seems to refute reports the carrier is still courting Apple. Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam has supposedly visited Apple’s headquarters as the carrier tests how a CDMA iPhone might work on Verizon’s 4G LTE network, according to an unsubstatiated blog report.
[Via Macworld, Engadget, Boy Genius and iDon’t Ad]
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
