Archive notice: This article was originally published on October 15, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Taiwanese mobile-phone manufacturers such as Asustek Computer, BenQ, Compal Communications and Arima Communications are currently tinkering with iPhone-like products and want to bring them to market by the middle of next year. The news portal DigiTimes reports this with reference to industry insiders. The devices are intended primarily for business customers, to have functions such as GPS integrated and to support 3G communication.
With the iPhone, Apple had shown how to design a mobile phone and thereby meet the needs of the market, futurist Matthias Horx said to pressetext on the sidelines of the Live-IT industry event in Vienna. Horx regards the iPhone as a prime example of a device where “the developers thought about how buyers will handle it“. A technical device has to function the way the user wants to use it. Then a product is successful, says Horx.
The hype around the iPhone is of course mainly carried by Apple fans. Operation by touchscreen is cited above all as the innovation. However, smartphones have not only been operable by touchscreen since the iPhone. Even before that, there were devices that could be controlled via the screen. Thus High Tech Computers (HTC) brought the HTC Touch to market. Since sales started at the beginning of summer, the manufacturer says it has already sold 800,000 units. The company followed up with the HTC Touch Dual and offers a device with HSDPA support and an additional input keyboard.
Alongside them, Nokia, Samsung and LG are also trying to nibble along at the success of the iPhone with their own products. With the Voyager, LG is bringing a new mobile phone that has a touchscreen on the outside and a second QVGA display as well as a QWERTY keyboard inside, with which SMS and emails can be written quickly. As early as spring 2007, LG presented another alternative to the iPhone with the KE 850 Prada Phone, which at the time existed only on paper. Half a year has now passed, the iPhone sold more than a million times in the USA, European fans are already waiting impatiently for it and the competition is having difficulty finding an effective antidote.
