“Apple’s influence on high-tech markets has long exceeded the company’s relatively small market share, and nowhere is that more obvious than in the wireless phone market. Barely a year after it introduced the original iPhone, Apple (AAPL) has redefined the wireless handset,” Stephen H. Wildstrom reports for BusinessWeek.
“And with the impending shipment of a new version that should put the iPhone in the mainstream of consumer and business markets worldwide, Apple is extending its sway over much larger players such as Nokia and Samsung,” Wildstrom reports.
“The most immediate impact of the iPhone has been on hardware design, encouraging a rash of imitators with big touchscreens,” Wildstrom reports. “That includes the new Samsung Instinct, which Sprint Nextel has been billing as an iPhone killer.”
MacDailyNews Note: Please see:
• Mossberg reviews Samsung’s Instinct: ‘It’s no iPhone’ – June 12, 2008
• Samsung’s ‘Instinct’ is obviously to make Apple iPhone knockoffs – April 01, 2008
Wildstrom continues, “Even Research In Motion, whose executives have ridiculed the iPhone’s lack of a physical keyboard, is rumored to be developing a touch-based BlackBerry.”
“Such efforts largely miss the point. Certainly, the beautiful hardware design adds tremendously to the emotional appeal of Apple products. But it’s the software that makes the iPhone, the Mac, and the iPod stand out from the pack of wannabes,” Wildstrom reports.
Full article – recommended – here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Carl H.” for the heads up.]
Even when the writer’s seem to get it, they don’t get it.
Wildstrom writes;
“… The Instinct shows that Samsung and Sprint have learned a lot, too. It’s a handsome product—maybe Samsung’s best ever. Its no- button face, … makes it look like the Apple handset’s brother, and it even comes packed in an iPhone-like box. …”
No, this is not Samsung’s “best ever” product.
It’s Apple’s typical, great product, and it’s Samsung’s desperate, hollow copy of that product.
The panic is tangible.
That’s very good for consumers.
As each day-week-month passes Apple moves further ahead of the competition. It would take ,years of a major RD effort on the part of all of these hardware manufacturers to even come close to vertical integration that Apple enjoys.
The fun is just beginning!
BizLaw beat me to it…..The RAZR was/is close to a very good design (ever play a game on it and accidentally hit the disconnect button because it’s too close to the circular control pad? stinks)
The software is the worst thing I’ve come across. They should have been working on that for a new generation of Moto phones.
Too bad, it’s really a fairly good design. just needs tweaking.
@Once And For All
I just can’t call a 2MP camera phone with crippled bluetooth functionalities superior simply because it has a good UI. It works for most people, sure, then I’ll buy a lot of AAPL and you guys can drive up the stock, but I won’t use an iPhone because it offered a better UI.