Fact: most phones last. Thing is, for us (and likely many of you), they last far longer than our clinically-diagnosed Gadget Attention Deficit Disorder would ever tolerate -- but for your dad, your sister, your college buddy with the hand-me-down ZEOS Pantera running Windows 95, or anyone weary of re-upping a two-year commitment, a handset can easily become a serious long-term investment. That helps explain why Motorola's venerable
RAZR series remains staggeringly high on Nielsen's latest US phone usage report -- third place, to be exact, at 2.3 percent of all subscribers behind the
iPhone 3G at 4 percent and RIM's
BlackBerry Curve line at 3.7 percent. Needless to say, that doesn't mean the ancient V3 line is still in third place for
sales -- it's more a testament to the staggeringly huge RAZR user base Moto managed to develop over the years, many of whom scored their phones at sub-$100 price points as an attractive, midrange value in the phone's twilight and have no intention of upgrading any time soon if they don't have to. Maybe the most interesting part of this is that two V3 variants are
also topping 2009's most-recycled list, so they're definitely getting taken out of circulation -- it just might take a few years yet before you don't know anyone that uses one, that's all.
posted December 22nd 2009 6:44PM
ew, RAZR?
doesn't anyone use a non-3g iphone?
@adrianomelette Razrs need to go back to just being for shaving and cutting wrists
@adrianomelette
I have a teenage daughter still rocking her 4 year old razr. Not that it's an option, but she says she doesn't want an iphone, they're for "douchey idiots".
She's a good kid.
@sweet greggo i know man, but don't people upgrade their phones anymore? i don't even want an iphone, but anything but the razr, lol.
@sweet greggo I have a teenage sister and thinks iPhones are quite nice. I might get her one if she keeps up her 4.0 gpa.
She's a good kid.
@pax copia
my dad still uses the first gen iPhone. good enough he says. he can afford to upgrade but chooses not to.
rockin the razr like its 2005, yeeeah
I wonder if I hadn't got sand in my Razr if I would still be using it?
OK probably not but it would have survived through '07 anyway.
@garrenteed
v3m 4 life
I've had a HTC Hero for a couple of months now, but I've had my Moto V3 right up until then. It still works great, looks pretty good too so I keep it as a backup phone. Must have a couple of years left in it too.
@Rumblejazz
Hilarious. I'm the same way with my LG Chocolate slider. I love my HTC Hero, but keep the Chocolate close by. You know, just in case.
@GeorgeAnthony
yeah must say I absolutely adore my hero, greatest gadget i've owned since the AA battery powered, 128mb flash MP3 player i got off ebay 8 years ago.
@Rumblejazz
Definitely, HTC's Sense UI has spoiled me, and it's going to be hard to want another phone after spending the last 2 months with the Hero.
@Rumblejazz
Ahh yes. I know exactly what you mean. I have an old RAZR that sits in a drawer waiting to be called on again. After I went swimming with my last iPhone, it got that call for a month or so and worked great the whole time. I think those things are pretty indestructible.
@Rumblejazz Did you go from a zero to a hero?
Where's my Motorola W233?????????????????????
who the heck is still buying Razrs???
@HighestRanked
Seriously? Did you even try to read?
"Needless to say, that doesn't mean the ancient V3 line is still in third place for sales -- it's more a testament to the staggeringly huge RAZR user base Moto managed to develop over the years, many of whom scored their phones at sub-$100 price points as an attractive, midrange value in the phone's twilight and have no intention of upgrading any time soon if they don't have to."
@HighestRanked
Dude if you can get a prepaid RAZR with T-Mobiles 1000 minutes that last a whole year for $100, that a lot of money you save.
Everyone wants a touch screen phone with internet, but i only make 35K a year, so i need to buy what i can afford.
Moto W233 biach
Just ignore him.
This nozzle's a troll, though lately he's hidden his history making it harder to spot.
@Mr Oos looks like a lot of people are still hanging onto their old Razers. I had a Moto before the Razrs came out; gorgeous machine but the interface sucked like a Dyson. Got rid of it as soon as I could.
@jon Yeah Mr. Oos is a troll, ignore him
@Mr Oos
I'm calling YOUR reading comprehension into question.
He wants to know who still buys them.
Valid question.
Had he said "why are people still buying RAZRs?" then your post might have some merit.
as it stands,
it totally fails
I used to be one of those people that would use a cellphone for 2-3 years, until I tried a smartphone for the 1st time.
Now, now I don't care about paying for the ETF, as long as I can have the latest, fastest, shiny new toy.
The carriers love me.
@GeorgeAnthony and either your wife or your wallet hate you :S
The problem is that feature phones don't change much... but smartphones keep adding goodies every time...
Anyways I still have my first Nokia phone with flashlight, and my Moto V195 that can run opera mini, yet, my very expensive touch pro 2 cant lol... how ironic :D ( I know opera mobile is there, but I prefer mini)
@TikiTeko
hahaha
Definitely not financially sensible. In the last two months, I have had the Samsung Moment, HTC Hero, and Eris. Finally settled on the Hero.
Now the Nexus One is killing me.
How is Opera on the phone(s)? I wanted to try the Instinct HD from Sprint, which runs Opera, but I ran out of Best Buy before I killed my bank account.
@TikiTeko
Forgot to mention how much I miss my old Nokia that had the flashlight at the top! Such an awesome feature, wish all phones would come with it (and not some lame app that just leaves your screen lit up), seriously.
@GeorgeAnthony
I still use that nokia as flashlight... it was specially useful when i was on vacation in Florida and a hurricane came up. :S
Opera Mini 4.2 is great, but Opera Mini 5 beta 2 is the best thing they could have ever made since sliced bread.... ! I mean you even have tabs on the thing, the speed dial, I love it. It renders the page fully, and over Opera Mobile 10, you can choose the imagine quality. Check the demo:
http://www.opera.com/mini/demo/
Still rocking my razr. Until it becomes non-prohibitively expensive to upgrade I will. I want to upgrade my sprint plan to the 350min+unlimited everything since its only 15$ more a month. However to be able to get a new plan price on a phone you either have to be in a data plan on sprint and have been for 2 years, or be a new customer. A customer coming from a non-data plan, even if they have been a customer for 2 years, cannot get a new plan price like everyone else. So it sort of creates a barrier cause I definitely dont feel like shelling out 400$ just for a new phone to use with the service when they are giving them out at 100$ with other contracts.
And where is Palm in all of this?
11th at .0000000000000001%?
@MizuInOz Palm has a lot of catching up to do, maybe soon they won't be in the red any more. The Pre is one of those products that I'd really like to succeed. Make sure you join the "I own a Pre and I have a beard" group.
The iPhone 3G was released on June 9, 2008, while the Palm Pre was released on June 6, 2009. The stats started from January 2009, 5 months before the Palm Pre was released.
Also since 2007, Palm shifted its focus towards developing a new generation of smart phones based upon their revolutionary webOS operating system, as seen in the the Palm Pre and the Palm Pixi smart phones.
The RAZR is the roach of the cellphone word.... we will all be gone from the face of the Earth and it will still be there... **dances to Hello Moto ringtone***
For all those RAZR haters... don't be so hypocritical, you know you loved this phone and used to shush and humiliate people that didn't have it !!! What you are too good for what you were enough 4 years ago?
Let's add up all the BlackBerry and say they've won... Any for all those, I own 3 iPhones...
It's hard not to sell a ton load of phones with buy 1 get 1 free deals!
I thought they discontinued the RAZR. AT&T doesn't sell them. Those phones got good reception, however I never gotten to experience it first hand.
Wow. My LG Dare is there. That's probably me since I'm online with it quite a bit (even though the browser is slow for full HTML sites).
Can't wait to upgrade however to the Droid.
That seems to be lumping iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPhone 3Gs numbers. It'd be great to see those 3 broken out. I'd also like to see some of the Android numbers, even if they aren't in the top 10.
In all fairness their pretty much the same phone, but yeah I'd like to see WebOS and Android phones on the list too and see how thay did
@(Unverified)
No it doesn't. It specifically says 3G iPhone. That means it's not the 3GS or the Edge iPhone.
Which also means it's not exactly accurate on the chart. I'm wondering why, if they're going to put an entire SERIES of phones from moto and RIM up there, can't they put the entire iPhone series up too? Why are they comparing a single iPhone model to an entire series of phones from RIM?
Let's see the numbers for the iPhone 3G vs. just the Curve.
@Rinum009 I think you meant 'they're' instead of their;)
Rick James of all people is the grammar critic, haha. I thought that was funny.
@Jack
I guess if they did that they would have to break the iPhone down into its 8, 16 and 32 GB variants. Besides, the 3GS is more akin to the Bold than the Curve.
What's interesting is that the 3GS doesn't appear at all. That seems a bit odd.
@MarkAnderson
good point
@Rick James
Thanks Rick James, I don't know why I didn't catch that.
+1 for proper English.
Part of why the RAZR remains up there is because there is still reason to buy them *new*. For instance, if you need a cheap, unlocked phone for overseas travel, you can visit a zillion sites and pick one up for under $100, sans any contracts/strings attached.
Wow, I didn't know I had such a common phone (Samsung Rant). I BARELY see anyone using that phone, and I live in the Los Angeles/Orange County area. I see more Verizon phones everywhere with an iPhone here and there.
How in the world is the Rant so popular? It has pretty decent hardware, but the firmware is a piece of crap. I can create a HUGE list of problems with the Rant's firmware, but I'm not even gonna bother. I'm already on my 3rd Rant within the last year, due to the firmware crapping out on me (the Sprint rep told me the last one was due to a bent phone when I could clearly tell it wasn't bent). I could just have really bad luck with this phone, but I've definitely had my fair share of problems.
The one thing I can definitely say was good was the GPS/Traffic functionality. It has gotten me out of tight spots before (Like I said, I travel between LA and OC a lot). Plus it's a huge upgrade in performance compared to the LG Rumor that I had before. That's probably the only thing I know of that was pretty good... And YouTube functionality, though the service was pretty spotty.
If you add up all the Blackberry percentages it comes out to over 6%.
Good Job Rim!
Better than iPhone.
@Dr Yusuf AlKindi that begs the question. If the numbers for the iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPhone 3G were combined they would totally dominate the list.