Verizon built up an incredible smartphone lineup in 2012, which led it reporting record smartphone activations in the holiday quarter. But as they always say, good things must come to an end. According to a new image obtained by Android Police, Verizon is pulling the plug on several flagship 2012 devices.
The HTC Rezound is completely sold out and no further shipments will be sent to retail stores. The LG Lucid, which was a solid mid-range Android device, will be retired on February 15th, with the final shipments going out to stores around that time. The DROID 4 has been retired and final shipments will be sent to retailers in February. The DROID RAZR 16GB has also been retired and its final units have already been sent to stores. Finally, and most notably, the 32GB Galaxy S III has also received its death notice. Final shipments have been sent and the device is retired.
You most likely will be able to find all of those devices, aside from the HTC Rezound, in stores for a couple of more months as Big Red filters through its remaining inventory. As to why Verizon discontinued these devices we’ll never know for sure, but we can speculate. In most instances, the devices were rather outdated and had even already been replaced in the RAZR’s case. For a flagship device like the DROID 4, it may be that we are looking at a DROID 5 very soon, maybe even at Mobile World Congress next month. But now that Google is controlling the ship at Motorola, that may not be the case. The 32GB Galaxy S III was most likely discontinued because of poor demand, as most people were probably opting for the 16GB model since the device has a microSD card slot and there’s no need to spend $100 more for 32GB of storage when you can get an SD card for $15 on Amazon. It could also be that Samsung is looking to free up space on its supply chain for any new devices it has planned, so we’ll be sure to keep an eye for Galaxy S III shortages on other carriers, as well.
What do you think Verizon has planned for 2013 and on? Let us know down in the comments!
Source: Android Police