Analyst: 2009 rivals may hurt iPhone growth
updated 12:00 pm EST, Fri February 20, 2009
RBC on 2009 iPhone Rivals
A slew of new full touchscreen cellphones introduced at this week's Mobile World Congress could significantly impact Apple's competitiveness this year, a research note from RBC Capital Markets says today. Analyst Mike Abramsky notes that the sudden and relative abundance of devices in the iPhone's category will give Apple a more difficult environment than it has encountered in the past. While not necessarily expecting damage to iPhone sales, the researcher warns that there could be either "downshifts" in sales to challengers or else damage to profit margins if Apple feels compelled to more aggressively price any future iPhones.
Among the more direct competitors are HTC's Touch Diamond 2 and keyboard equivalent the Touch Pro 2, the Samsung Omnia HD and the LG Arena. In many cases, the devices often center on larger or higher resolution screens as well as custom interfaces on top of older operating systems like Symbian S60 or Windows Mobile.
Apple's own intended response is considered important but has received few direct clues. A new hardware string has hinted that the next iPhone will be a major revision, but little else in terms of hardware has surfaced aside from a purported shell leak that suggests at least 16GB of storage and a cosmetic change.
total speculation
02/20, 12:08pm reply
They said the same thing about the Apple iPod.
dliup
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Joined: Jan 2006
speculation....
02/20, 12:18pm reply
.......blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.......
This Is Not News Until It Actually Happens - Thanks for the waste of time!
UberFu
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Joined: Oct 2002
you are correct
02/20, 12:32pm reply
I dont think its speculation at all. If you doubt this story maybe you should look at some of the stuff coming out, much of it hands above the iPhone.
The iPhone will die a slow and painful Newton like death.
Guest
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Joined: Nov 1999
Asteroid
02/20, 01:19pm reply
The Earth may be hit by an asteroid at any time. Doesn't mean it is likely to happen.
boris_cleto
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Joined: Sep 2002
If apple......
02/20, 01:21pm reply
would offer the iPhone to ALL carriers, maybe they would corner the market BUT since they partnered with crappy AT&T, (which sucks royally), I will not be buying a iPhone. The palm pre and BB's will keep apple down.
Guest
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Confusion and app store
02/20, 04:46pm reply
Guarantee there is NO HOPE for these wannabees.
Haywire
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Joined: Nov 2001
HD cellphones???
02/20, 09:19pm reply
We are basically talking about a cellphone. Why the heck would an ordinary cellphone really need high-definition viewing. Is the average person really going to be viewing movies on their cellphones. With the iPhone it may be that way because the iPhone is basically an iPod with a 3G chipset. The iPod was designed to download audio and video as part of the iTunes platform. But these devices such as the Omnia and Diamond were never really PMPs. I'm not sure what is used to get media on those cellphones. Drag and drop files? The people who buy these other cellphones aren't even going to use them the way most Apple users use the iPhone. If the iPod wasn't trumped by other PMP devices I'd say the same would go for the iPhone. There have always been PMP players with better hardware than the iPod that had supposedly better sound and played more file formats, but it still didn't make a difference. It's just that the whole Mac/iPod/iPhone platform works in sync to make things easier for users.
Hardware-wise, the Samsung Omnia HD has the current iPhone 3G beat cold, and anyone that is willing to use the Symbian OS should really enjoy using it. Still, it is expensive and I don't know about how good customer support is. As impressive as it specs are, I doubt it will be flying off the shelves in quantity like the next iPhone iteration will.
Constable Odo
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Joined: Aug 2007
Please
02/20, 09:47pm reply
This is just Microsoft PR gone wild: the Windows Mobile 6.5 rollout (which doesn't support multitouch, and has a horrible UI) is the root cause of this warning, and it's so damn poor it's almost as laughable as the Zune.
Palm's new entry may help Palm stay around for another year or two, Android may make small waves, and in some aspects these may be better than the current iPhone OS: but Apple isn't sitting still on their OS development and will probably blow these johnny come latelys out of the water.
dimmer
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Joined: Feb 2006