When I first saw the advertising for the Motorola Q, I had the feeling it was going to be a hit. I also thought the Palm Treo was in big trouble.

The first prediction wasn’t a real stretch, and I ended up being right. Thin and feature-packed is clearly a recipe for success. As far as smartphones go, the Q’s launch was a tremendous success. At its high point in early June of this year, almost 20% of Verizon handset researchers looked at the Q online. For context, the only other smartphone to break through even the 5% interest level this year at Verizon was the XV6700, a Verizon branded UTStarcom device, which peaked at 6.1% in mid-January.

It looks like the Q is attracting more than just office drones too. Consumers interested in the Q were primarily comparing it to multimedia phones. A smartphone with strong multimedia appeal that garnered the highest level of overall shopper interest this year…..perhaps it was a true crossover product?

In July and August, consumers shopping the Q were also shopping the Motorola RAZR, Samsung SCH-a990 and SCH-a930, and LG VX8300. With its launch in August, another multimedia phone, the LG Chocolate immediately became the phone most cross-shopped by Q shoppers. Of course, the Chocolate is highly shopped in general (maybe more on this in a later post) so that came as no real surprise.

Treo shoppers, on the other hand, are sticking with e-mailed enabled phones and mostly considered other Treos and smartphones. An average of 2.2% of Verizon handset researchers looked at each of the Treo models each month.

This was starting to make sense. I know I had considered the Treo - it’s the clear smartphone winner in our office market share contest. But I always thought it was too bulky and was holding out for something better. Consistent with my past technology upgrade experiences, I was rewarded for waiting - along came the Q. Being a researcher I read the reviews and cornered some early buyers I knew to get their opinions. Despite its lack of a touch screen and a Palm OS, I was still sold on the Q’s overall package and ended up buying. Meanwhile, Palm issued a press release earlier this month – their revenue was going to be short of earlier guidance “primarily due to lower Treo volumes in carrier retail channels.” I guess I’m not the only one comparing the two and going with the Q.

Analyze more domains: + +

Done reading? subscribe: To get an automatic feed of all future posts subscribe here, or to receive them via email enter your email address in the box in the right column.

Link to This Post:     

Posted under: Consumer Electronics - Gaming | Trackback Link | Permalink |