Analyst: Motorola sold 100,000 Droid smartphones

Although anticipation was high, lines outside Verizon Wireless retail stores to purchase the Android-based Droid smartphone were relatively short last Friday when the device went on sale. Nevertheless, one analyst says that Motorola sold around 100,000 Droid units in the first weekend of its release.

According to Mark McKechnie at Broadpoint AmTech, Verizon had around 200,000 units in stock and sold half of them over the weekend. He estimated that Motorola will sell 1 million phones running on Google's Android platform in the fourth quarter and 10 million in 2010, giving new life to the struggling handset maker.

"Although the press is stating the Droid launch was not as successful as the iPhone launch, we don't believe investors expected an iPhone-like launch, but rather a first step in a cadence of products that will help bring Motorola's handsets out of the death spiral experienced during the past three years," Citigroup analyst Jim Suva wrote in a research note. 

Verizon has not released any weekend sales figures, but seemed confident about the level of buzz the Droid was generating. On Friday, Verizon also launched another Android phone, the HTC Droid Eris. The collaboration between Verizon and Google has benefited from the close relationship that has developed between Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam and Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

For more:
- see this Bloomberg article [1]
- see this Dow Jones Newswires article [2] (sub. req.)
- see this WSJ article [3] (sub. req.)

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