Apple chief executive Steve Jobs came in for a lot of stick when he said he was going to "reinvent the phone with iPhone", which he claimed was five years ahead of any other mobile on the market. John Collinsreports.
A phone that could browse the web, play music, make calls and generally act like a mini-computer in your pocket seemed revolutionary in the US, but in Europe and Asia powerful smartphones have been on the market for the last couple of years.
In the last year or so, smartphones have genuinely got smart and are no longer just expensive phones with contacts, calendar and web browser thrown in.
Nokia, which it must be remembered sells more than 10 times as many phones in a quarter as Apple hopes to sell in 18 months, put it up to Apple with the N95 introduced last year. With the latest version packing 8GB of storage, Nokia styles it a multimedia computer rather than a humble phone. It is probably even more powerful than the PCs of 10-12 years ago particularly when you consider features such as global positioning system (GPS) and its accelerometer, which like the iPhone reorientates the screen when you turn the screen sideways.
The key feature of the N95 and the Windows Mobile based-devices is that anyone can create an application for them - and thousands of people already have. Applications from the useful (a digital "spirit level") to the bizarre (the Star Wars Light Sabre app for the N95) are available for both platforms. Apple has yet to open up the iPhone to third parties although Jobs is expected to announce the availability of a software development kit next week.
The iPhone contenders also all run on 3G networks rather than the Edge network favoured by the iPhone, which is referred to as a 2.75G network because it is somewhere between the older GPRS technology and 3G. Apple's US partner, AT&T, has let slip a 3G iPhone is on the way but it is unlikely to make an appearance before the summer.
Given its price tag, the iPhone lacks a number of features you might expect as standard. It has no FM radio (a perennial criticism of the Apple's iPods), provision to add extra storage or global positioning system, which is becoming standard for high-end mobiles.
Another Achilles heel of the iPhone is its relatively paltry 2 megapixel camera. The most basic phones in Europe pack a camera of this resolution, while many of its competitors such as the upcoming Samsung F480 have 5 megapixel snappers. The key difference with the iPhone is its user interface, which is based around touch.
"We are all born with the ultimate pointing device - our fingers - and iPhone uses them to create the most revolutionary user interface since the mouse," said Jobs when he unveiled details of the phone in January 2007.
Picking up the iPhone and using it is when Apple's real innovation becomes apparent - this is a phone anyone can use without tuition. Samsung is the manufacturer most clearly stepping up to challenge Apple on this front with the F480, which will have a similar customisable widget interface as the iPhone.
Apple has never specialised in being first to market. It didn't produce the first PC, the first MP3 player, or the first smartphone. What it has succeeded in doing is making products easy to use and the object of consumer desire.
Although Apple reiterated this week that it will sell 10 million iPhones by the end of this year, analysts have suggested it is not selling as well in Europe as expected.
In January, Bernstein Research said just 315,000 iPhones had been sold in Europe but there are an estimated one million worldwide that have been hacked to work on any network. From March 14th consumers here will become the latest Europeans able to vote with their wallet.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/VR3765MFOBH2NMV2QNICYDF67M.png)