By Business folks and economic intellects will tell you there are plenty of ways to artificially stimulate demand. If you ask me, that is EXACTLY what happened with Expansys and the Motorola Milestone. Realizing the commercials sucked and the Droid-to-Milestone comparisons might not be made among the average consumers, I’m sure Expansys worried how well the device would actually sell. And let’s face it… they NEED it to sell well because for the month of December they have the exclusive offering of the device.
Then a few websites began reporting the Motorola Milestone had sold out and was the fastest selling gadget in history:
But if you check the Expansys website right now, you can easily put one in your shopping cart and make the purchase immediately:
So what gives? What actually “sold out” was the “first shipment” and a “second shipment” was already on the way and based on what’s in stock right now- presumably arrived. In this case, “sold out” is sort of misleading… wouldn’t you agree? They could have had 20 units the first day and planned to “sell out in record time”, published a press release about how they sold out in record time, had 50,000 units delivered the next day, and enjoyed the orders from everyone thinking they got one of the last units of a device that should probably be sold-out:
“The demand for the Motorola Milestone has been staggering. We received the units at 10am on Thursday, 2.5 hours later we had sold out. A second shipment is already on the way and should be arriving in time for Christmas orders”.
I like the “in time for Christmas orders” when they clearly were about 20 minutes away from homey’s front porch. And honestly, I bet this very article will further drive sales even though I’m stating the “sold out” thing is probably overdone and self-hype more than anything else. Granted… the device is WORTHY of selling out but it all just seems a tad bit odd the way it went down.
Anyways, I hope they never sell out and they have unlimited supply and everyone buys them. You know why? So we can have more awesome members visit the Motorola Milestone Forum at AndroidForums.com!
Leave the selling out “marketing crap” to Apple. Let them play that mind game. Google stay your course because 2010 is looking mighty fine!!!!
I cannot believe that Motorola went down the exclusive route anyway….. after a amazing launch with verizon they choose to miss out on a christmas launch with a UK carrier. I think the next bombshell will be that Vodafone (parent company of Verizon) wont bother to pick this up in the new year. To say that Motorola need this to be a big success worldwide I think at least in the UK they dropped the ball.
@Ratcom
Hi. Interesting thesis you have about Vodafone UK might not pick up Milestone in the New Year.
My own view is that the first network to pick up the Milestone will be Orange rather than Vodafone because Orange carries the Motorola Dext (Cliq in US) and had good sell through from what one store manager told me….he said he had heard they were going to carry the Milestone in the New Year unofficially. When you walk into a Vodafone shop and ask about the Milestone, the common response is……”Motorola? we have not had Motorola for over a year and they have not had a good mobile since the …..(name varies according to memory)!”
Then they try to sell you a Crackberry.
You might be interested to know that Vodafone is not the parent of Verizon. Verizon is a massive US wireline and wireless telephone company and it owns a subsidiary company called Verizon Wireless (to hold its wireless assets). Verizon owns 51% of Verizon Wireless and Vodafone owns 49% of Verizon Wireless. So Verizon has the final decision making power over Vodafone when it comes to this joint venture company…..over the years, Vodafone has been uncomfortable with this relationship and rumours surface about either selling out their 49% stake in Verizon Wireless or buying 100% (which Verizon will never let them do!). Hope that clarifies things for you.
In fact O2 in Germany can’t handle all the demands for this phone either, still many people are waiting for their order.
Selling out sounds like a Wii.
Lets make the unit sound even more popular that it is so everybody is driven mad in the efforts to aquire one.
Mines waiting for me at the Post Office depot, picking up tomorrow.
The wii sold a lot. It’s just that nobody cares about the other wii games once you look beyond wii sports and mario. I have a wii just for wii sports/fit/resort but I’m disappointed that there’s nothing better out there.
@modelportfolio2003 – thanks for clearing up the whole vodafone & Verizon thing, very interesting. and yep I’ve got a feeling that it may be orange or t-mobile who end you with this great handset. Oh and remember vodafone are launching that bloody iphone in the new year :(
guess what.. markets/target audiences are different, and in germany there wasn’t even a billboard up for this device.
this article is based on just one days visit of expansys UK website. I never expected this from phandroid .. way below your level guys. I’m one of the many who pre-ordered the device and waited till yesterday for it to be shipped. They got first batch on Thursday and dispatched all. the website was showing 100+ as it is automatically updated from warehouse in Hongkong and later on it went back to ‘estimated 4 days’. later on, on friday they got more in and dispatched then all again. Currently its showing 4 days again. Milestone has huge demand in Australia and in UK. try looking up forums with people posting how they are looking for online stores to provide it to them.