I said it before and I'll say it again. phone business model is not the same as portable music player business model.. Think of the Moto Razr. It was a great success until people got bored and wanted a new design a new model, something to make the phone unique. With the Pre and many more. The uniqueness of the iPhone will be gone, so in term of Chess, Apple..it's your move now..

Another crap story about Apple and it's product. iPhone is here to stay and applications comes and goes. As far as i am know, no other phone comes near Apple iphone or ipod in terms of usability - ease of use and style. Like ipod Apple will continue innovate and keep iphone ahead of competitors. As for their competitors, they will tries to copy but will failed.
ae86takumi - mot was just lucky with that phone. They should have sticked to what they do best - ICs not consumer products.

I disagree with this article on nearly every level. Yes, there are competitors to the iPhone. But at the same time, no they are not on an equal playing field with the iPhone. Most consumers care about the functionality of a phone, but they also like the phone to operate as smoothly as possible. Apple spent years working on the interface and OS for the iPhone and it shows when using other phones and not getting the same results.

The fact that the applications come and go is a testament to the fact that there are the many apps being developed each week. Much like software for computers, not all will be successful and have a sizeable return...even in the short-run.

I believe we will see a large portion of the original iPhone customers renew their contracts with AT&T come summertime. Think of it this way: many iPhone users who jumped on the bandwagon from the beginning paid the horendous cancellation fees to be one of the first to own it. If they were truly unhappy or "bored" with the product then they would, most likely, pay the cancellation fee and switch back to their old provider. I'm sorry to say, but your article provides little to prove that, in fact, any other competitor will dwarf the iPhone in the near future.

If there is anything worse than Apple, it's Apple fanboys. OMFG.

Usability trumps features. And the iPhone has user-friendliness in spades.

It'll be years before anyone but MS (and even them) can touch the iPhone for the simple reason that it's real advantage is the software and Apple's decades of experience writing operating systems. Because it's such a complete platform, the hardware need only be upgraded (faster processor, more RAM, etc.) to add whole new layers of functionality. Blackberry's software, even with all the computing power in the world, couldn't digest the kind of data that a genuine computer OS can. That is the skill set you need and will need increasingly in the future as people come to expect more and more functionality from the same simple control surface. It is the skill set that neither Palm, Blackberry, even Google, has. And even though they have no excuse, MS' Mobile platform pales in comparison.

I expect the Android to surpass the iPhone shortly. Then Apple can go back to where it came from. Nothingness.

Looks like someone has everything against Apple...*cough* Sektor *cough*.

Your comments have no basis, which is why I now have one person marked down whom I will never consider intelligent when it comes to comments. For your information, I am not an Apple "fanboy." There are many things that have actually pissed me off about Apple, but when it comes to the iPhone there really is no competition. Google's phone platform is pretty solid, thus far, but still has some things to be worked out before it will be on the same level as the iPhone OS.

D said it best when he described Apple's ability to upgrade the hardware around the software. Being able to plug in the iPhone to the computer, update the software easily, and expand its functionality indefinitely trumps nearly every other "solution" that has popped up on the market.

For the others to really compete in the coming years, they are going to have to revamp their software completely. The Blackberry is a fantastic product, no doubt about it, but one major pitfall I can say right off the bat is the fact that the internet browser it has is a scaled down version that browses at pretty slow speeds. The iPhone has the full scale Safari browser that you find on the desktop, which is why the browsing speed is so much faster.

But those are just a couple more points. I'm sure you'll have something worthwhile to say after this give your past comments.