The Motorola Q gets ready to take on the BlackBerry

Research in Motion has had the mobile enterprise market pretty much locked up for a few years with their BlackBerry devices, but Microsoft is definitely making an impact with their latest Windows Mobile devices. I prefer to receive and view full Word, Excel, and PDF documents on my device rather than requiring that senders copy and paste text into the body of an email to so it can be read on the BlackBerry. IMHO Windows Mobile devices are more powerful and versatile than BlackBerry devices that are primarily focused on email. A new device that is squarely targeted on grabbing some of that BlackBerry market is the Motorola Q, that will be available on May 31st.

I was lucky enough to have a local contact at Motorola ask me to put together the Reviewer's Guide that is sent out to the media with evaluation units so I have been playing with a Motorola Q for a couple months now. I did just receive a production model from Verizon Wireless and you can check out my Flickr unboxing photos to see the device in hand.

The Motorola Q is a Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone with an integrated QWERTY keyboard and loads of other features that make it very attractive to the business and consumer customer. Email and text messaging are quick and easy with the well-designed keyboard and an Office document viewer is integrated into the ROM. Consumers will love the Bluetooth stereo headphone support and integrated stereo speakers, as well as the 1.3 megapixel camera. I will be posting a full review of the device on Geek.com later today or tomorrow and will add an update to this entry with the link.

After using the device for some time I believe the Q will do quite well in the U.S. market with the rather low price point, US$199 after US$100 instant credit and 2-year service activation, slim form factor, and powerful operating system. In a recent AP article a Motorola division chief stated that they expect to see sales similar to the extremely popular RAZR device. Motorola is estimating sales of 750,000 units in the first 90 days, 1.5 million in the next 90 days, and 3 million in a three month period after that.

I personally do hope Motorola does reach these numbers and now with the Motorola name, low price, and feature set people may actually start picking up Smartphones and trying them out. I have been evangelizing the Smartphone platform (Palm, Windows Mobile, and Nokia) to coworkers, friends, and family for a couple of years and I am starting to see people actually give these devices a try. We now have about 10% of our company using Windows Mobile devices and the word is spreading on how useful they can be when you are out of the office and on the road.