Verizon may drop Droid 3, current 3G/4G hotspots this month
updated 11:55 pm EST, Sun January 1, 2012
Verizon may drop many phones, hotspots in January
Verizon may be on the edge of replacing a large swath of its device line if a rumor floated on New Year's Day is an indicator. Among other withdrawals, a lone source for The Verge had Verizon stopping shipments of the Motorola Droid 3 in January. The exit would likely be in prep for the delayed Droid 4 launch the following month.
The timing would make the Droid 3 one of Motorola's shortest-lived smartphones yet, taking it out of the market just half a year after it first showed. Motorola has had a problem in the past few months of overlapping phone launches and shipped the Droid Bionic to Verizon in September, only to follow it up two months later with the mostly improved Droid RAZR.
All current hotspots would also go away in January, the insider understood. Novatel's 4G MiFi would get its last shipments this month, while the Samsung LTE Jetpack and ZTE Fivespot would likely phase out sooner as they're not slated to get replacements. These raise a chance of a new range of 4G hotspots arriving in January or February.
Other phones would disappear from the group, including the short-lived and likely slow-selling LG Revolution, the now year-old BlackBerry Curve 3G, and the Palm Pre 2. LG and RIM either have or will have sequels soon, while HP's end to webOS hardware will drop the Pre 2 by necessity.
