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iPhone Passes the Razr to Become Best Selling Phone in the US
Posted by Sean Fallon at 3:13 AM on November 11, 2008
Just days after supplanting the BlackBerry in customer satisfaction among business wireless smartphone users, Apple's iPhone has taken down another mobile phone icon, Motorola's Razr, in terms of total sales. According to NPD (the leading wireless research firm) the iPhone outsold the Razr in the 3Q—representing the first changing of the guard in three years. This change comes despite a higher price tag in the midst of a struggling economy. In fact, NPD notes that overall sales of mobile phones are down 15% from last year. Hit the press release after the jump for more details.
These days, most in-the-know folks would sooner eat glass than carry a Motorola phone. The company has shredded its reputation by failing to address basic interface design issues: freeze-prone software, head-scratching menus, keys that demand Herculean strength. It's baffling that such a venerable company could build such frustrating phones, considering the zillions presumably spent on development. How did Motorola make such a bollocks of its wireless division? Now that the company has 
As revealed in that leaked Sprint roadmap from last month, Sanyo's Katana Eclipse and the 
Motorola, upset that one of its former executives might be violating a no-compete clause in his contract, has sued him for going to work at Apple with the iPhone as an executive in sales. The contention isn't just sour grapes, says Moto, but that the exec, Michael Fenger, has intimate knowledge of Motorola's "trade secrets and customer relationships". But let's be clear here: The people who settled for a free RAZR are not the people waiting in like for the iPhone. We'll see what happen. Non-compete suits are usually pretty cut and dry, but this one could get interesting, if not humourous. [
Wired Senior Editor Nick Thompson was on the Today Show this morning talking about why the N95 and iPhone are the best high-end phones and the RAZR is the best cheap phone. OK, fair enough. Unfortunately for Nick, when he dropped the RAZR to the floor to demonstrate its durability, it ended up getting destroyed in the process. It's a sound and sight I'm sure many of you former RAZR owners are familiar with. Well, I guess it proved your point, Nick: the RAZR is cheap. Very cheap. [
Yetro is something so unfashionable it has yet to be retro—and probably will never be. Example: my RAZR. I've had it for almost three years now. I hate it. Actually, hate is too strong a word. I pity it. My mobile phone with its nauseous blue-painted interface, its ability to change ring tone to the Motorola theme whenever it feels like it, and its battery, which now gives me about five minutes' talk time before it bleeps like a demented synthetic chicken. In the video above, Jesus and I "reenact" a more joyful time, its original unboxing three long years ago. Today, I'm thinking I should bite the bullet and retire the old boiler. Is the utter demise of the RAZR finally nigh at hand?
Say you're a company that had a hit design about three years ago and have been banking on variations of that spec ever since. What's the best way to improve your designs so that people will buy them and turn your company around? Is it firing half of them at one of your UK facilities? Actually, it probably is. What better way to loosen up entrenched ideas than to get rid of half the people responsible for them, shocking the other half into thinking up something new or face the axe as well? Motorola says in addition to laying off these 50%, it might even close the facility altogether. [
From the bestselling cellphone in history to the most ignominious 
It's no gold-plated diapers, but the RAZR2 V8 Luxury Edition does have 18k and 24k gold plated accents, a fancy analog/digital clock, and all the rest of the standard Moto RAZR2 features. All the non-gold parts are "black slate" and "vacuum metal", along with some snakeskin effects on the back. The only things you're getting extra with the Luxury edition (other than the gold) are a Moto H680 headset—which has gold accents itself—and the envy of dirty middle-aged men everywhere. [
Auto Blog Show has released these pictures of an incident, in Russia, involving a Motorola RAZR 2 advertising campaign and a nearby Mercedes.
