Rival manufacturers also find it hard to understand what all the fuss is about. With improved music players and new handsets out nearly every month, they believe they already have adequate answers to the iPhone.
"Ours has been and will continue to be a very competitive industry," said William Plummer, Nokia Corp.'s vice president for multimedia in North America. "In this case, it's nice to see someone coming to market to validate our vision."
Analysts said Nokia's latest smart phone, the N95, is packed with more high-quality features and functions than the iPhone. But you won't find it on any U.S. carrier's list of handsets.
Nokia is selling the phone directly to customers for $749, a price that makes the iPhone's cost almost easy to swallow. Customers buy their voice and data plans separately from AT&T or T-Mobile, the only carriers in the U.S. that operate networks that work with the N95.
Nokia is the only handset maker with a software arm that could compete with Apple's know-how, said analyst Michael McGuire at Gartner Inc. "Everyone else is working with Microsoft or someone else," he said.
But because most computer users are familiar with Microsoft Corp. products, that may be an advantage. T-Mobile's Wing, for instance, was the first smart phone in the U.S. to use the Windows Mobile 6 operating system, which provides PC-like capabilities such as editing and forwarding e-mail attachments.
Motorola Inc. has two handsets it hopes to introduce in the U.S. soon. Both the Moto Q 9h and the Motorizr Z8 offer super-fast downloads, an MP3 player, a wireless stereo headset, clear video and a host of other features.
BlackBerry, the quintessential business e-mail device from Research in Motion, and the competing Treo from Palm Inc. have added multimedia features and improved voice quality as they have pushed harder in the consumer market. The recently introduced BlackBerry Curve, for instance, is a step up from the popular Pearl, adding a full qwerty keyboard, a 2-megapixel camera and other features.
"There are so many users out there, and they all have different preferences, and many don't want to spend that much for a phone," analyst Hazelton said. "The iPhone will do well, but it won't kill the competition."
--
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
How five phones compare with the iPhone
Motorola Q
Release: May 2006
Price: $49.99-$429.99 with two-year contract
Size & weight: 4.4" x 2.5" x 0.5" & 4 ounces
Display: 2.4"
Battery life: 4 hours talk, 192 standby
Carriers: Verizon, Sprint, Alltel
Memory: 64 megabytes
Camera: 1.3 megapixels
Other features: Qwerty keyboard, GPS, video capture, side scroll wheel
--
Nokia N95
Release: Sept. 2006
Price: $749
Size & weight: 3.9" x 2.1" x 0.8" & 4.2 ounces
Display: 2.6"
Battery life: 4 hours talk, 215 standby
Carriers: AT&T, T-Mobile
Memory: 160 megabytes
Camera: 5 megapixels
Other features: GPS, Wi-Fi, FM, video capture, keypad slides up and down
--
Samsung UpStage
Release: March 2007
Price: $99 with two-year contract
Size & weight: 4.1" x 1.7" x 0.4" & 2.6 ounces
Display: 2.1" (music), 1.4" (phone)
Battery life: 2.5 hours talk, standby not released
Carriers: Sprint
Memory: 53 megabytes
Camera: 1.3 megapixels
Other features: Dual face with music on one side, keypad on the other
--
BlackBerry 8300 Curve
Release: May 2007
Price: $299.99 with two-year contract
Size & weight: 4.2" x 2.4" x 0.6" & 3.9 ounces
Display: 2.4"
Battery life: 4 hours talk, 408 standby
Carriers: AT&T
Memory: 64 megabytes
Camera: 2.0 megapixels
Other features: Qwerty keyboard, BlackBerry maps, light sensing screen
--
T-Mobile Wing
Release: May 2007
Price: $349.99
Size & weight: 4>4.3" x 2.3" x 0.7"
Display: 2.8"
Battery life: 4 hours talk, 144 standby
Carriers: T-Mobile
Memory: 64 megabytes
Camera: 2.0 megapixels
Other features: Qwerty keyboard, video capture, Wi-Fi, slide-out screen
--
Apple iPhone
Release: Friday
Price: $499-$599 with two-year contract
Size & weight: 4.5" x 2.4" x 0.5" & 4.8 ounces
Display: 3.5"
Battery life: 8 hours talk, 250 standby
Carriers: AT&T
Memory: 4 or 8 gigabytes
Camera: 2.0 megapixels
Other features: Wi-Fi, touch screen, virtual keyboard, Google Maps
--
Source: Product web sites
