To date, HTC has announced that it has sold 2 million HTC Touch phones. How is that millions more than the iPhone? You can't compare sales of HTC's other cheap low-end phones that have been on the market for years with iPhone sales, when the iPhone has been available in limited countries and on limited carriers for less than 1 year.
First impressions - it looks a little naff. The design itself is simple and good enough but most of the features look like iPhone gimmicks. There appears to be significant lag in the interface according to the YouTube videos and it looks less practical from a UI perspective. The multi-touch bit on the iPhone is presumably patented, which is why the photo zooming, etc looks slow and awkward.
I reckon this thing will flop. I don't know how Apple has done it but, like the iPod before it, the iPhone just makes everything else look like second best. I can imagine buying this device is like getting a Creative MP3 player. Rather than marvel and gawp at your device, people just ended up saying "so how come you didn't get an iPod?"
Not that Apple should become complacent though. The good news is that competition will push Apple's products and make them better. We could certainly do with the higher res screen, for example.
I'll definitely be waiting for the 3G iPhone though.
First, HTC has been doing the phone thing for over a decade while Apple has been at it 10.5 months so I think it's a little unfair to be drawing conclusions about superiority based on phones sold. As far as what iPhone 2 is going to be, it's anybody's guess -- you really don't know anything about it. My guess is it will be even sexier than before.
That's your opinion, one that you're entitled to. Perhaps it will. Certainly the hundreds of people who bought a Zune this year knew about the Apple lineup of iPods and chose to go with the MS player. Good. Competition is good for business and for the consumer. Also, Beauty is in the eye of the beholder too. Don't forget that. I honestly like the back of the Touch Diamond. The prisms are nice. The front is a tad too iPhone to go unnoticed, but from here on out, touch phones are going to be looking a lot alike with big glass fronts. I like the higher resolutions and feel this is great. It just means higher resolutions for iPhone users in the future. How far in the future, who knows. It is known, however, that the iPhone software as it is now can playback back video that is twice is resolution which should say something about where Steve wants to go with this.
With less 10M iPhones sold, it is hardly common. I have only seen a couple in the wild besides my own. People hear a lot about it but that's not the same thing. As it becomes available in more countries and as Apple rolls out new devices and new features, all at better prices, I think you'll see that the people won't consider it common at all and will be buying them faster than you're giving Apple credit for.
Surely that's the crux of the whole issue.
So you're saying I may be mistaking an unresponsive interface for lack of responsiveness?
Oops, my mistake, I missed today's press conference. And I confused some other products with HTC's. Still, sales of 11 million smartphones (not all of which are as sophisticated as the Touch) in an entire calendar year could hardly be described as "millions more" that iPhone sales, considering that the iPhone was only available for 6 months in 2007, and only in the U.S., and only on 1 carrier.
