There is no other cellphone manufacturer that so desperately needs a winner in its cellphone lineup. As successful as the first generation Razr phone was – the company has sold more than 100 million of the series – so disastrous is the company’s current situation of financials and market shares. The company lost $158 million in the second quarter of this year and its market share in the global cellphone arena slipped by 31.6% over the second quarter of 2006 – and Motorola is the only top-5 phone manufacturer facing retreating unit shipments at this time.

In this view, the Razr 2 does not arrive a day too early. The cellphone will be rolled out by Alltel, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, US Cellular, and Verizon Wireless over the next 14 days, with Sprint and Verizon Wireless stores beginning to offer the phone this weekend. Sprint will be selling the device for $250 with a 2-year contract, AT&T and Verizon will be charging $300. Unlocked phones also have popped up around the Internet with prices ranging from the suggested retail price of $799.95 to some stores selling the devices for as low as $470.

The official product names of the phone will be “V9” (3G HSDPA), “V9m” (3G EVDO CDMA) and “V8″(GSM).

The Razr 2 is yet another flip phone, but it is 2 mm thinner than the first generation Razr. The phone has a much more expensive feel to it than the first Razr and introduces a range of new materials. It is built using steel for the internal frame; aluminum, magnesium and plastic parts are visible to the eye on the outside. The company claims that the casing of the phone is scratch-resistant, with the lens cover being made with chemically hardened glass. Motorola has put a lot effort into increasing the subjective value perception of the Razr phone.

At the core of each phone is a 500 MHz ARM11 processor, which Motorola says is about 10 times faster than the original Razr CPU. The feature set also includes a 2.2” QVGA display (320×240 pixel), a 2-megapixel camera with multi-shot capability, 512 MB or 2 GB of integrated memory, a micro USB port support USB 2.0, physical “vibrating” feedback in response to finger taps, Windows Media (Janus DRM) audio playback capability as well as 176×144 pixel video playback at 15 fps. The device runs on a Linux/Java platform with a newly designed user interface that, according to Motorola, allows users to find their contacts faster than before.