Quote:
Originally Posted by tokuzumi
The reason to bring up marketing is key. If you don't advertise, you don't sell. Sure there are cases where word of mouth makes something extremely popular, but if you have a product to sell, and you don't put the money into advertising, you don't sell a product, regardless of the price. People buy what they know about. If I wasn't on this site all the time, or sites like PhoneDog, PocketNow, etc, I wouldn't know squat about the Eris, or what it does. And those BS "YOU" commercials by HTC don't tell you much about what their phones do. They mainly advertise Sense, despite not mentioning it by name in their ads. People knew about the droid, and came in to see it. Verizon sales people were most likely given more incentives to sell the Droid. If Verizon sales reps are like most other retail sales folks, they get commission. If they get more commission to sell the Droid, which phone would they show a customer?
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And I have some points to make regarding all of that...,
#1: Just because Motorola won the battle, doesn't mean there wasn't one. Just because you think you know why HTC lost the battle, doesn't mean there wasn't one.
#2: So if it is all based on marketing, and that is all that matters, then HTC might as well make a device with a keyboard. Everyone will buy it anyway if they advertise it. They should have never stopped making devices with keyboards.
#3: The Droid was marketed more than the Eris because Verizon knew it was a better phone. Period. If they thought the Eris was a better phone, than you would have seen it marketed like it was Verizon's flagship device.
#4: Having a keyboard was absolutely marketed in several Droid commercials. So maybe a part of the reason it was marketed so heavily was BECAUSE it had a keyboard. I remember the first Droid commercial I ever saw had a bunch of don'ts for other devices and does for the Droid- with a keyboard being one of the first things on the list. So they knew people cared about it and that is why they marketed it as such.
#5: HTC was free to advertise as much and however they wanted. Nobody stopped them from making a bunch of commercials and flooding the airwaves with them. Just because they didn't fight a good enough fight for your liking, doesn't mean there was no battle. There was a battle. HTC just got totally destroyed in epic fashion.
#6: The Droid was and still is sitting right next to the Eris in just about every Verizon store. Anyone that came to look at a Droid will see a cheaper device called a "Droid Eris" sitting right next to it. And it runs all the same apps, has the same OS, and the same functionality- even has a similar name. Yet people are still choosing the Droid and paying more. That has to be a major eye opener for HTC.
#7: If HTC wants Verizon or any other carrier to market their phones like a flagship model (which is what Verizon did with the Droid) then they need to make the best phones. They need to give Verizon a good reason to choose the HTC model as the flagship model. Motorola did that. HTC did not. Every single feature on the Eris can be found on the Droid (except for the Sense UI). The keyboard on the Droid can not be found on the Eris.
#8: I guarantee you they thought not having a keyboard was a plus for the Eris. There is no way they went out of their way to drop keyboards, after making the best keyboard ever on a phone (TP2), if they didn't think it was a plus to not have a keyboard. It had to be a real eye opener when they got destroyed by a more expensive device with the same functionality that had a keyboard.
All of that had to be a major eye opener for HTC. As it turns out, a lot of people actually do want a device with a keyboard.