Bloombergreports that an analyst is estimating that Motorola probably sold at least 100,000 of its new Droid smartphones over the weekend.
Verizon Wireless, the carrier for the device, had 200,000 Droid phones on hand, and most stores sold at least half of their stock, Mark McKechnie at Broadpoint AmTech Inc. said yesterday. Including other models, Motorola will sell 1 million phones based on Google Inc.'s Android software in the fourth quarter and 10 million in 2010, he said.
Motorola and Verizon are competing against a new version of Apple's iPhone, offered in the U.S. through AT&T Inc. Apple sold more than 1 million of the latest model in its weekend debut in June. Motorola's share of the global phone market dropped to an estimated 4.7 percent last quarter from about 5.5 percent in the second quarter, the company said last month.
"I see the first few days as encouraging," McKechnie said. "There seems to be pretty good demand -- they've taken the right steps and picked a good partner with Google on the Android side."
Motorola took over Times Square digital billboards on Friday as part of the promotional push behind the new phone. Citigroup analyst Jim Suva told Bloomberg he expects Motorola may sell 1.3 million Droid units in 4th quarter of 2009 and another 9 million in 2010. Suva also thinks Apple will sell 28.5 million iPhones next year, far surpassing Motorola's Droid sales. However, MKM Partners analyst Tero Kuittinen is concerned the estimates for smartphone sales are overdone because the growing unemployment figures could turn consumers away from the expensive data plans that come with smartphones.
Bloomberg 
