The Times has an article about the rapidly diminishing popularity of the Motorola Razr family of phones. Along with the company's diminishing profits, Motorola's also rapidly lost the foothold it once held as the Prom Queen of cell phones. I remember when I first saw the Razr a couple years ago, I was blown away by it's thinness and sexiness. Now, it has the same "cool" cachet as a Ford Focus.
When the sleek Motorola Razr V3 cellphone first hit the stores just over two years ago, it carried the price tag of a must-have status symbol: $500.Now? About $30 with a two-year service contract.
Motorola’s fortunes have plunged along with the price of its Razr. Its profits have collapsed, and it announced plans last month to lay off 3,500 workers. Since last October, its stock has dropped 30 percent, attracting the attention of the billionaire investor Carl C. Icahn, who bought 40 million shares last week on a bet that he could push the company to do better.
At first glance, the company’s troubles are puzzling. Almost one billion mobile phones are sold worldwide each year, and Motorola has almost a quarter of the market. Consumers are also replacing their phones faster, on average less than every two years.
But the cellphone business is still relatively young, and Motorola is learning a cruel new lesson about consumer tastes in phones. An industry that has focused more on microchips, screen size and data speed is finding it has more in common with the fashion business.
I was reminded of this article and the fickle and mercurial nature of trendiness, when I was checking my email this morning and found a new email from my bank offering me a free Razr. Sad. Poor, poor Razr--From hero to zero in the proverbial blink of an eye.
Although what's even sadder is this one quote from the article from an "Albert Lin, an analyst at American Technology Research [who] paid $500 to obtain a Krzr a few days before the introduction, and carried it for all of one week before giving it to a friend."
“I was hoping to be treated like a movie star on the streets of New York, like I experienced with the Razr,” he said. When that didn’t happen, he switched to the ultra-thin Samsung model, which he said was having the desired effect. “When I take it out, everyone asks me, Is that even a real phone?”
Seriously? Treated like a movie star on the streets of New York because of a phone? Maybe in White Rock, South Dakota, population of 6. The only phone capable of bestowing such veneration on the user...would...be...the iPhone. Haha. I always enter such a warped distorted reality when it comes to Apple products.
Tangentially and slightly off-topic: this might merely be just a reflection of my old age, but I still think the Moto StarTac is one of the greatest phones ever. Can I get a holla on this from my friends reading this at the senior citizen's home?
