With its US$99 price, the new Android-based Motorola Backflip really stands apart from Apple’s iPhone, and on more grounds than just appearance.

Both are smartphones, and both are offered through AT&T. They provide many of the same features and functionality.

Although, in addition to their different form factors and operating systems, the divergence in pricing of the devices suggest that they occupy very different niches in AT&T’s strategy.

The Backflip is “intended to be a mass-market device similar to the Cliq over at T-Mobile,” Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC’s mobile devices technology and trends team, reported to LinuxInsider. “It’s got to be inexpensive, but it’s also got to provide a good experience.”

He added,

“I have to tip my hat to Motorola for being one of the companies to put its stamp on the Android platform…They did a pretty good job.”
AT&T has long been the sole U.S. carrier for Apple’s hot iPhone. But it also has, or soon will have, phones representing myriad other mobile platforms, Llamas mentioned, including Research In Motion’s BlackBerry and Palm’s webOS.

The new Backflip, and its norm-busting design, represents the company’s first foray into the arena of the Android.

“Not everyone wants an iPhone,” Llamas insisted. “They’re taking the approach of offering many devices for many different demands and needs in their customers.”

Social networking, for example, a particular focus of the Backflip, is experiencing a great deal of growth among consumers over 30.

It is doubtless that Android phones are full-featured, Allen Nogee, a principal analyst with In-Stat, told LinuxInsider.

The unique factor of the iPhone, however, has been in the availability of applications:

“Like the Droid from Verizon, I think [the Backflip] will have a following, but the popularity of the iPhone platform has always placed these phones into the iPhone imitator class in some customer’s minds.”

And as for the price, “the cost that subscribers have been paying for phones has slowly been dropping in recent years,” sad he, “most phones now fall into one of four prices: $199, $99, $49 or free…Operators usually try to keep a few at different price points to attract the most customers. Since the iPhone is $199, it makes sense this one is $99.”

Given that buyers must sign a two-year contract for voice and data services totaling more than $1,500, “a hundred dollar difference in price doesn’t matter much if AT&T can acquire a new customer with a two-year contract.”

“This is part of the transformation of wireless toward smartphones everywhere…Today the smartphone is working its way down in price, giving more customer segments the chance to buy it.”

The Motorola Backflip will compete with the iPhone only in that Lexus competes with Mercedes, Kagan said, “They are not the same in customers’ minds — customers usually buy one over another for any of a number of reasons…customers can choose the manufacturer they want with the features they need.”

“After it has been in the market for a few more years…it will be interesting to see how customer choices drive the direction of these devices.”