Indeed, Broadpoint AmTech analyst Mark McKechnie estimates Verizon (VZ) sold about 100,000 Droids in its first weekend. McKechnie believes the carrier had about 200,000 units on-hand at launch, and most stores he surveyed had sold at least half of their stock over the weekend.

That’s not nearly the one million iPhones Apple (AAPL) sold during the first weekend of its latest model debut, but it’s impressive nonetheless. Certainly, Motorola (MOT) hasn’t moved that many handsets in so short a period in a very long time–if ever.

“I see the first few days as encouraging,” McKechnie told Bloomberg. “There seems to be pretty good demand–they’ve taken the right steps and picked a good partner with Google on the Android side.”

Citigroup (C) analyst Jim Suva agreed, noting that Droid doesn’t require iPhone-like sales to be successful. Said Suva: “Although the press is stating the Droid launch was not as successful as the iPhone launch, we don’t believe investors expected an iPhone-like launch, but rather a first step in a cadence of products that will help bring Motorola’s handsets out of the death spiral experienced during the past three years.”

Then there was this from RBC’s Mark Sue, who declared that anyone expecting a launch reminiscent of the iPhone’s was expecting too much: “Motorola’s Droid landed at Verizon and while the new device is not the be all and end all for Motorola it’s an important beginning for a company that sorely missed out of a growing market,” he wrote. “There were no around-the-block lines of consumers waiting to get their hands on a Motorola Droid, yet investors shouldn’t expect them either. We’re looking for a steady ramp instead towards our estimate of approximately 1M units in 4Q09.”

That’s the word from Broadpoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall, who believes Apple (AAPL) will bring the iPhone to Verizon (VZ) in the second half of 2010 and forfeit AT&T’s “sweetheart” carrier subsidy as a result.

“While [Apple] started off with exclusive arrangements in 2007 with the original iPhone launch, the company has since migrated towards multiple carriers per region,” Marshall wrote in a note to investors. “In our view, diverse carrier support is a key element to driving global penetration of the iPhone. Therefore, we believe the chances are high the iPhone will find its way onto the [Verizon] network in 2H10.”

Of course, should things play out that way, the iPhone will no longer be the powerful subscriber-retention tool it is today. And Marshall believes that will lower the subsidy it commands from an estimated $450 to around $300.

This might seem to imply a nasty hit to Apple’s bottom line, but Marshall figures any losses Apple might suffer would be more than made up in volume. He sees Verizon selling roughly 14 million iPhones in the 2011 calendar year. And with an average selling price of $500, that’s another $7 billion in revenue for Apple.

That’s the word from Broadpoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall, who believes Apple (AAPL) will bring the iPhone to Verizon (VZ) in the second half of 2010 and forfeit AT&T’s “sweetheart” carrier subsidy as a result.

“While [Apple] started off with exclusive arrangements in 2007 with the original iPhone launch, the company has since migrated towards multiple carriers per region,” Marshall wrote in a note to investors. “In our view, diverse carrier support is a key element to driving global penetration of the iPhone. Therefore, we believe the chances are high the iPhone will find its way onto the [Verizon] network in 2H10.”

Of course, should things play out that way, the iPhone will no longer be the powerful subscriber-retention tool it is today. And Marshall believes that will lower the subsidy it commands from an estimated $450 to around $300.

This might seem to imply a nasty hit to Apple’s bottom line, but Marshall figures any losses Apple might suffer would be more than made up in volume. He sees Verizon selling roughly 14 million iPhones in the 2011 calendar year. And with an average selling price of $500, that’s another $7 billion in revenue for Apple.

In one week, Yahoo will report its third-quarter earnings, after the market closes.

And so far, its stock is showing signs that investors are hoping for better days ahead for the Internet giant.

Shares are up 8.5 percent for the month, almost 13 percent for the last three months and almost 39 percent since the beginning of the year.

While that’s not the rocket ship Google (GOOG) has been on–the search giant’s stock is up 70 percent since January, which includes a big boost recently on expectations of a strong earnings report tomorrow–it’s clear investors are hoping an improvement in the online advertising market will boost Yahoo’s fortunes.

Wall Street is expecting $1.12 billion in net revenue and seven cents in earnings per share from Yahoo (YHOO)–and a better performance than that could boost the stock.

In fact, a pair of bullish analyst reports that came out today predicted just that.

Broadpoint AmTech analyst Benjamin Schachter raised his price target to $21 a share, noting that after the search and online advertising partnership deal closes, Yahoo “should be meaningfully smaller and leaner, but should also be a significantly more profitable company.”

And Benchmark Co. analyst Clayton Moran moved Yahoo from hold to buy, with a price target of $20.

But a string of recent exec departures in Yahoo’s advertising units are making some within the company’s ranks slightly worried.

The departures include Jim Schinella, the company’s SVP for corporate partnerships, in September.

And yesterday, Glam Media announced that it had nabbed Josh Jacobs as SVP of Brand Advertising Products & Marketing. At Yahoo, Jacobs was a key exec in its display ad platform unit.

Many inside the company expect more departures in the ad and engineering arena at Yahoo, pointing out that many big stock packages given to hold onto talent are about to vest.

In addition, once Yahoo’s search and online advertising partnership with Microsoft (MSFT) is approved, as it is likely to be by the end of the year, hundreds of Yahoo engineers will get the choice of moving to Microsoft.

Some will, of course, but some simply do not want to go and many Silicon Valley companies and start-ups BoomTown spoke to report seeing more resumes recently from Yahoo staff.

There is little Microsoft can do to stop possible leakage of tech talent from Yahoo until the deal is approved, since the companies cannot do any integration until it is.

Perhaps worst of all, there seems to be nothing Yahoo can do to stifle its proclivity to yodel, which I begged Yahoo execs to forgo in its recent $100 million “It’s Y!ou” marketing push.

No such luck!

Yesterday, Yahoo launched its online Yodel Studio (no, I am not kidding), where you can record your own yodel in various music genres, like, um, rap.

Yahoo held a kickoff event in New York’s Time Square yesterday–however did I manage to miss it, since I was in Manhattan?–with a passel of celebrity yodelers like Jewel, as well as one in London’s Covent Garden.

Today, there is a yodel event in Mumbai, India. Bollywood yodeling anyone?

Here is a link to the famous Yahoo yodel, by the way, if you are so inclined.

And here is a video of the Times Square event, and also the very memorable Yahoo commercial of Taylor Ware, after she won the Yahoo National Yodel Challenge contest in 2003.

Some things never change (even if they should!).

Apple (AAPL) declined to say what other carriers the company might be talking to, but it’s a safe bet that if the company is in discussions with a second carrier, it’s China Mobile. After all, the two companies have talked about a deal before, and while those negotiations stumbled repeatedly over issues like revenue-sharing and hardware localization, it’s hard to believe that Apple would turn its back on the world’s largest wireless carrier.

There are 600 million cellphone users in China and 415 million of them are China Mobile subscribers. That’s a hell of an opportunity to pass up, no matter how difficult negotiating with the company might be.

According to China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou, Apple hasn’t passed it up. During the company’s quarterly earnings call on Aug. 20, Jianzhou said specifically that talks between the two companies continue. Just what they might involve is anyone’s guess, although Dan Butterfield at iPhonAsia speculates that they would likely be for an EDGE 2G-only version of iPhone.

“No matter the future of TD-SCDMA, China Mobile will maintain their EDGE 2G network, which has broad coverage and a clear signal throughout major urban zones in China,” Butterfield writes. “In my view, EDGE 2G could be the bridge between Apple and China Mobile. There are hundreds of millions of low-salaried wireless consumers in China who aspire to iPhone. Many have in fact already purchased cheap Shanzhai (iClone) knock-offs. But Shanzhai iPhones are not reliable and quickly become landfill. A low-priced ‘real’ Apple iPhone running EDGE 2G only, might sell by the tens of millions.”

All in all, a very impressive showing. Certainly, investors were agog over RIM’s financials. Shares in the company spiked on the news, rising more that 20 percent to $59.37 in after-hours trading. “This is wildly better than people were looking for,” said Duncan Stewart, analyst at DSAM Consulting in Toronto. “Getting improvement in both margin and growth at the same is a rare thing.”