I saw an ad on TV last week, and it was all about the Droid Incredible. It was shiny, flashy, and completely pointless to the average user: All it did was tout specs for the phone, and when 1ghz Snapdragon Processor flashed across the screen, I just shook my head. Who comes up with this stuff?

Android phones have only just started to outsell iPhones in the United States. If you look at Apple’s marketing campaign, they focus almost exclusively on software. All of the partner carriers have head-on shots of the iPhone, with a hand model doing stuff, and the moniker being repeated over and over: “There’s an app for that”. Even their OSX campaign focused on the flaws of Windows and how using OSX just made things easier.

Back to Android. The commercial was great – but only to a very select audience. That audience will probably be moderately to extremely geeky, such as myself. I would buy a phone if it had a 1ghz snapdragon cpu in it, but only because I know what a snapdragon cpu is. Would the average Joe know what AMOLED means? I guess it would be a selling point for the sales person down at the mobile phone store, but only if the user actually made it to the store based on that commercial.

The ad would have done better to focus on the features of Android: the thousands of apps, the keyboard, running simultaneous applications, the camera, the widgets, the customization capabilities, basically everything touted in the iDon’t commercial. Android has proven to be a big player in the mobile device marketplace, but it could – and will – be so much more.

Some other interesting Android ads, albeit in another language:

That’s the Way I Like It.
What Apps do I like?
Android On-Stage