Motorola Droid gets official on Verizon; arrives Nov. 6 for $199

Verizon has officially announced the Motorola Droid smartphone, which will arrive on the carrier on Nov. 6 for $199.99 after $100 mail-in rebate.

The Google Android-based smartphone is highly anticipated because Verizon, up until now, hasn't had much in the way of smartphone offerings beyond Research in Motion's BlackBerry family.

The Droid -- which will run on the as-yet-unseen Android 2.0 Eclair operating system and is being heralded as the "thinnest full-QWERTY slider smartphone available" -- is expected to please the carrier's immense customer base and prevent its customers from running to other carriers with better smartphone options, such as AT&T with the Apple iPhone, Sprint with the Palm Pre and HTC Hero and T-Mobile with the Motorola CLIQ.

The big selling points of the Droid:

• It offers features the iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile phones do not
• It offers Android 2.0, expected to fix the performance issues of previous builds of the OS
• It's on Verizon, the carrier with the most coverage nationwide
• It's got a big touchscreen
• It's got a slider QWERTY keyboard

Verizon's positioning the Droid as an iPhone alternative, but I don't believe the phone addresses the same crowd: the iPhone is all-touch, the Droid is not; the iPhone has broad appeal, the Droid appeals to geeks and power users; etc.

I appeared on CNBC's Power Lunch on Monday to discuss this with Broadpoint Amtech analyst Brian Marshall. My points: Droid vs. iPhone is a tempting comparison, but on a global scale, the companies with the most to lose are actually Research in Motion (with BlackBerry) and Microsoft (with Windows Mobile).

Here's the clip:

Will you bite?

Previous coverage on ZDNet:

• The month ahead: Will Droid do damage to the iPhone's mojo?
• Verizon preps fourth quarter device barrage; Droid will 'stimulate demand'
• Motorola Droid official specifications leaked: 16:9 touchscreen, DVD-quality video, 0.5" thick
• Jason D. O'Grady: Verizon Droid ad attacks iPhone on features
• Verizon unveils 30-second ad for Droid Android phone; slams iPhone
• Jason Perlow: DROID aims to make Apple iAnnoyed
• Meet 'Droid,' the next Motorola Google Android phone after Cliq