New Phones Target Motorola's Rusty Razr

"Internally, they are predicting 20 million phones will get sold in the first year," Snyder says. "That's going to be tough. Razr did 9 million in its first year. I think they might get 5 million to 7 million."

Indeed, knocking off the Razr is not going to be easy.

There's never been anything like the Razr in cell-phone history, say industry watchers.

Two years ago, after a seemingly endless series of blunders, Motorola had fell to third place in handset market share, behind Korean tech powerhouse Samsung.

Motorola CEO Ed Zander, then newly installed, made a big bet on a half-inch thick folding phone with an IM kidspell name. When it hit the market in time for the holidays, the Razr became a fashion accessory in its own right. With its record sales, it single-handedly lifted Motorola out of the doldrums.

Razr's success hasn't exactly expired yet. Variants like Krzr and Slvr may help sustain the legacy -- but the passion for Motorola's funny names, if not its thin phones, has decidedly cooled as fashion-fickle consumers look for the next hot thing.

Prices of Razrs have dropped to zero, and even the newer, heavily touted Krzr has had its price cut in half in some recent promotions. The pricing trends say a lot about slumping demand, say analysts. And while the small, or even free, price tags keep the sales volume up, it doesn't do much for the bottom line.