Motorola Delays Droid 4 to February

Motorola is pushing the Droid 4 release to February 2, as Verizon spreads out the launch of its high-end smartphones to capitalize on sales.

A leaked Verizon document suggests Droid 4, originally expected on December 22, won't hit store shelves for over a month. The device features a design strikingly-similar to the Droid Razr, and offers many of the same specs, but it includes slide-out QWERTY keyboard and a thicker form factor.

Verizon, which plans to sell the Droid 4 for $300 with a two-year contract, likely pushed back the device to give other LTE flagship phones breathing room. The carrier launched the Razr, HTC Rezound and Samsung Galaxy Nexus in the past two months, alongside other 4G LTE handsets such as the HTC Thunderbolt and Motorola Droid Bionic.

The company has spread out the release of its smartphones in the past to give other devices the spotlight. Samsung's Galaxy Nexus was reportedly ready to go on sale in early November, but Verizon instead chose to run marketing campaigns centered around the Razr and Rezound before launching the Nexus earlier this month.

Another reason for the Droid 4 delay may have been to keep customers who have purchased a Droid 3 happy. The device launched in July, and although technology quickly becomes outdated, a December launch of the Droid 4 would be less than six months after its predecessor.

The postponed launch of the Droid 4 also gives Verizon a high profile release to kick off next year. The device will be largely similar to the Razr, but the addition of an LTE device with a physical keyboard will likely lead many customers to make the switch from Verizon's 3G to its 4G network.

Customers eager to get their hands on the Droid 4 will be disappointed by Verizon's decision, but from a strategic standpoint, it may be the one that makes the most sense for the carrier.

Motorola Delays Droid 4 to February originally appeared at Mobiledia on Fri Dec 23, 2011 2:29 pm.

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RIM denies lying about BB10 phone delays

Research in Motion has hit back at reports that it lied about the reason for the delay in bringing the next generation of BlackBerry phones to the market.

Boy Genius Report posted a story on Thursday claiming that phones running the new BB10 operation system had been pushed back because RIM did "not have a working product."

This contradicted the Canadians' assertion that BB10 handsets would not arrive until later in 2012 because it was waiting for new LTE chipsets to be manufactured.

The company has taken the somewhat unusual step of issuing a statement to counter the claims from BGR's inside source, which the site identified as a "high-level employee".

Inaccurate

RIM has reiterated its own stance, while painting BGR's report as "inaccurate and uninformed."

RIM's full statement reads: "RIM made a strategic decision to launch BlackBerry 10 devices with a new, LTE-based dual-core chipset architecture. As explained on our earnings call, the broad engineering impact of this decision and certain other factors significantly influenced the anticipated timing for the BlackBerry 10 devices.

"The anonymous claim suggesting otherwise is inaccurate and uninformed. As RIM has previously explained, and as Mike Lazaridis reiterated on the earnings call, we will not launch BlackBerry 10 devices until we know they are ready and we believe this new chipset architecture is required to deliver the world-class user experience that our customers will expect. Any suggestion to the contrary is simply false.

"We appreciate the interest in our future platform and we will continue to work hard to deliver that platform as soon as possible. At the same time, we also remain very excited with the success of our recently launched BlackBerry 7 smartphones and we believe these products offer a very compelling choice for both new customers and the almost 75 million BlackBerry users around the world."

Kicking RIM when its down

RIM has been under unprecedented scrutiny in recent months as profits wane, stocks fall and market share dwindles.

The commercial disaster that was the BlackBerry PlayBook and the infamous internet services outage in October have contributed to a terrible 2011 for the company.

BB10 is thought to offer a little hope for RIM, which is why it may have been so keen to respond to BGR's hatchet job with such a strongly-worded statement.

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