Phonemakers roll out the touchscreens

i’ve had a touch screen on my phone for at least 18 months ….in the form of a UTStarcomm connected PDA , runs on windows mobile , got all the multimedia bling and mobile office that looks soooo much like its big brother that i even prefer it to a full blown laptop because “i’m-about-to-pack-the-laptop-because-i’m-going-2-floors-up” or “laptop-is-just-too-cumbersome-for-a-10min-meeting-in-the-hall” , apple is more about SOOOO GOOD LOOKING then “man this works for me” for me steve jobs is just the blond of IT

I still don’t understand what Apple innovated with this great iPhone that is way behind in sales targets, doing so bad they had to drop the price by $200 after what 2 months? Its a iPod & they added internet, a phone, and a touch screen, wow. It doesn’t even come across half the things a blackberry or a real intuitive device can do.

iPhone is nothing to brag about. Business still runs on blackberry and the iPhone doesn’t even support blackberry mail. iPhone isn’t a phone it’s just an iPod that comes with a phone and internet. Think about it the iPod touch is essentially the iPhone without a phone. Why? Becuase the iPhone is an iPod with the phone added, took the iPod touch now and added a phone. They had to drop their price 200 because things are so great? Haha no because sales are going horrible and they need to regain their pace and are hoping to do so during the holiday season. If the iPhone was so great it would have a major market share, not less than 2%, and if Apple was a great company, their new Operating System they just released wouldn’t have done so horrible as it is doing in terms of sales. Only good thing about Apple is a high market capital & share price. See Apple came up with an iPod and just keep dragging it out with add on’s not innovation to try to continue to go through the sales cycle. It addes colors, sizes, memory, a phone to it, some internet, but no more innovation.

come on, without the introduction of iphone, will other carriers or phone markers work so hard like this? What? The idea not come from iphone? Please don’t lie, we are not babies.

I think everyone is missing the real boat…. I’ll spell it out for all of you… It is a “M.U.L.T.I.-T.O.U.C.H.” touch screen with over 300 patents… Because it registers multiple touches at once, it allows for gesture programming, which apple has utilized beautifully. No one else has a screen like this, nor will they ever have a screen like this… therefore, they cannot compete against the iPhone… They have already lost… The real question is who the real winners are? Apple.. or the consumers who just got handed the coolest tech gadget to hit the industry since the mouse and the GUI. Did I mention is it running OS X… and that makes it the first mass produced wearable computer… That’s one small step for Apple, and a giant leap for mankind. I just wish it wasn’t AT&T riding the coat tails to victory.

The problem is the US market, not the cell phone market.
US consumers are cheap and don’t like to pay a ton for their phones.
Europe, Japan and Korea have had great touch screen phones for several years.
South Korea still has some of the best cell phones on the market. They are just not compatible with most US networks and the manufacturers have not made English versions of them.

To SoCal Tommy… HTC released the Prada touch screen phone 6 months before Apple released the iPhone.
It wasn’t released in the US due to the price. They knew US consumers wouldn’t buy it.
US consumers still want cheap phones.
The iPhone is a neat toy, but it still lacks in many areas that a Blackberry or Treo are capable of providing.

Jonathan: hate to rain on your parade, but most of the world is past your simple view of the “mobile communications device” as a simple phone (without getting about how it’s already a complex display radio device that just emulates a phone).

People only go crazy over the iPhone (in the USA) because with Apple’s unique UI, it offers a minor subset of features already available to the rest of the world albeit at slower speeds.

With pressure from Google and Yahoo pushing mobile applications that bring mobile, visual, direction/directory search, among other add ons such as GPS , to the virginal USA, it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Looking to current Japanese phones is a good indicator of what the USA might get in the next 5 years, such as QR code information using the phone camera and credit cards built into the phones for swiping are just starters.

As the one poster pointed out stripping the HTC Touch of Wifi is yet one more reason Sprint is in Trouble. They just got rid of their CEO Gary Forsee for all his blunders. Come On Guys, remember the old addage. Compare Apples to Apples, not Apples to whatever the people in charge of Sprint were thinking with this obvious poorly thoughtout idea.

I do like the intuitiveness of the iPhone, but for my needs, my O2 XDA mini still serves me well. The iPhone does not have Excel, PowerPoint, Word, nor does it link to my Lotus Notes to give me my appointments or my Lotus e-mail. To top it off, the iPhone does not give me GPS that my O2 XDA mini provides with it’s incorporation of TomTom Navigation. Furthermore, the iPhone does not have expandable memory like my O2, which can swap out 8 GB of SD cards.

They already took away the reason I would purchase this compared to the Iphone, WIFI!
The Sprint Version has WIFI stripped out. WHY?????
If you want to compete don’t remove some of the best innovations from the product. What is Sprint Thinking?

I guess when the critics were saying it would flop the price is too high and there not in the cell phone business. They were dead wrong they proved they can make a good margin and catapolt AT&T to the top of cell phone companys.

Right, and in typical Apple fashion lets make sure there’s only one channel of distribution for a well made product.

I hate to rain on the parade here, but most cellphone users simply want to make calls and in many cases text.

I don’t think the traditional phone makers have a thing to worrry about. The Iphone is a niche product. The VAST majority of cell phone users don’t play in the price range the Iphone is. Additionally to compare the MP3 player market to the cell phone manufacturer market is like night and day. The IPhone is great but it will not dominate like the ipod.

With the iPhone being the “first to market”, they have a huge advantage. I would say that the iphone will stay in the lead for at least the next couple years.

HTC say’s they’ve been working on the Touch screen for 2 years?? What were they waiting for?? Someone else to actually “do” something? I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. So just maybe the phone companies didn’t think much of the “touch” screen and didn’t want to disrupt their “in place” phone providers like Nokia, LG, etc. Again, whether you like Apple or not, they have definately “stirred the pot” of consumer desirable tech innovation.

I am a Windows Mobile to iPhone convert. Trust me, I did it because I got a free iPhone. And I am a convert now ! The iPhone now sets the bar so high, any other phone has leaps and bounds to catch up.

iPhone is not just about touch. It is the usability. Simple things that makes life so much easier.

Palm Treo should be given credit here as those were the one of first phones out n the market with Touchscreen. iPhone popularized touchscreen phones and made it look beautiful compared to a plain Jane ‘Treo’.
(http://thebizshow.wordpress.com)

Too bad this thing ugly. The silver border around the iPhone is ugly too. Convert the iPod touch into a phone and you’ll have a winner.

Whether a phone is touch screen or not really isn’t the point. The iPhone wasn’t even the first touchscreen phone. Most uesrs (minus Mac heads) will by a smart phone that fits there needs not one that look pretty and has a touchscreen.

P.S. This is by no means a knock on the iPhone. Just the plan truth.

Apple’s competitive advantage ISN’T the touch screen. It is the OS that the interface is built on. And no company in the world is close to being able to compete on that basis.

Isn’t this the HG Touch? There has been so much talk since the day the Iphone was launched by phone owners, press, and companies… just admit it— Iphone is the best phone on the market.

I have both an Iphone and a blackberry 8800— and these days, the Iphone serves as the most robust tool in my pocket. When I go on vacation and don’t need to do work but want to be connected to the internet— Iphone connects via wifi and I can see webpages the way that they are on a computer- not a cell phone version or a blackberry version.

If I want to listen to my music- I can, on my iphone. If I want to watch movies while my friend goes for a 3 hour drive to get to the villa- I CAN. If want to know the weather, I can look at where I am going and see the 5 day outlook. If I need to make a call— I can on my iphone.

The Iphone bridges a major gap that existed for the normal consumer- if you need only email- go for the blackberry-if you want a visual experience that is basically a media based phone, the iphone is the one for you.

I found this a very interesting and informative article. I imagine LG, Nokia, Motorola, etc., can’t just lay down and die, but with the unanimous lack of success competitors have encountered unseating iPods from their throne, I have to wonder if the cell handset powers that be see some writing on the wall.

I don’t think Apple’s worried.

What’s not to like about being the best touch phone, by far, in a sea of wanna be’s?

The wanna be’s will lend further validation to Apple’s innovation.