News flash: ROKR may "flop"

Well, we were never too keen on Motorola's ROKR musicphone in the first place, and now it seems that many of you out there agree with our assessment; Moto has only unloaded 83,000 of the iTunes handsets per week since it launched, compared to a robust 500,000 RAZR units each week during the same period. Moreover, American Technology Research analyst Albert Lim claims that interviews with distributors, retailers, and Cingular call center workers have led him to speculate that ROKR phones are being returned six times more often than other new cellphones. Moto CEO Ed Zander is laying the blame for ROKR's poor showing squarely at the feet of the marketing department, claiming that their ADVRtising doesn't make clear that ROKR is not in fact a synonym for iPod. Although ROKR's stumble did not keep Moto from beating analysts' estimates in their latest earnings call, it seems that the ROKR, and not the nano, will be looked back on as the product that got "screwed" in the marketplace (well, maybe).