NEW YORK — An aggressive television ad campaign from Verizon Wireless is adding to the support building for a software package from Google that is shaping up to be the most formidable challenge yet to Apple’s iPhone.
The commercials for the Droid phone, at right, made by Motorola, list features that the iPhone lacks, such as a physical keyboard and the ability to run applications simultaneously. It ends with the tag line “Everything iDon’t. Droid does.”
It’s not the first ad from a wireless carrier to take aim at the iPhone’s weaknesses. Notably, Sprint Nextel’s ads for the Samsung Instinct and Palm Pre have compared these devices to the iPhone. But the Verizon ads come at a sensitive time for the iPhone, as users have grown frustrated with the network of the sole U.S. iPhone carrier, AT&T.
Verizon gets high marks for its network quality, but it has lacked a “smart” phone that can match the iPhone’s ease of use and breadth of third-party applications other than BlackBerry products.
The Droid will run Google’s Android software, which is gathering momentum as a platform for a range of manufacturers, in contrast to the Apple-only model of the iPhone. The Associated Press
