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June 14, 2010

As the wireless industry is waiting for Symbian's 3 and Windows Phone 7 to appear, Apple's iPhone 4 is poised for some competition, this time from the Android operating system, and most of its supporters are rising to the challenge.

Also, Motorola is promising to outdistance HTC with a roadmap heading towards a 2 GHz phone. And both Sprint and Verizon are talking about the success of their Android flagships.

Not to be outdone, LG has promised no less than 20 Google phones by the end of 2010. As we said earlier, the industry is clearly not letting Apple have its own way, and is determined to fight back with all it has as ammunition.

Like Samsung, LG has been fairly strong in high end phones with advanced hardware and multimedia specifications, but closed operating systems. Now the two wireless handset makers are getting serious about open OS smartphones. Samsung is likely to produce the first Symbian 3 handset and is readying its gigahertz Android offering, the Galaxy S LG, and along with HTC it will be first to deliver a smartphone for Windows Phone 7, and also for MeeGo, but in the meantime, it plans to increase its Android line-up from a couple of models to at least 20.

Sprint Nextel is making hay out of its first real stand-out superphone, the HTC EVO. Speaking at an investor conference last week, CFO Robert Brust commented "every year, all U.S. carriers, with the exception of AT&T, go through a little trauma called 'iPhone introduction'. We have a little churn issue called 'people leaving to go to the iPhone'."

But Brust added that the EVO would be better than previous Sprint devices at stemming that tide. "Our hope is that we won't lose as many customers this year as we have in the past," he said during an interview, claiming that AT&T's well reported network glitches and its new tiered data pricing would make Sprint look more attractive.

Brust was also quick to distance himself from Sprint's previous 'iPhone killer', the Palm Pre, which delivered disappointing results. "The Pre was for people who didn't really want the iPhone. But the EVO is a phone that people can get instead of the iPhone."

Over at Motorola, the Illinois-based handset maker will join the increasingly important gigahertz superphone brigade when it ships the Droid Shadow, known as Milestone XT720 outside Verizon. Sanjay Jha, CEO of the company's mobile division, is looking towards smartphones that really can replace notebooks. These would include dual-core processors and eventually 2 GHz silicon.

Other sources said that Motorola is readying a new wireless handset that will incorporate the Nvidia Tegra 1 GHz apps processor, an iPhone-style gyroscope, Android 2.2 and beyond, and full Flash 10.1 hardware acceleration.

Motorola's CEO also hinted that, like HTC, it was suffering component shortages because of high demand for its top-end handsets. "Droid sales are going extremely well," Jha said. "If I could build more I'd sell more."

"Apple is really setting itself apart from the Google Android phones with the use of the 3.5-inch retina display in the iPhone 4," said Vinita Jakhanwal, principal analyst at iSuppli. Apple's system uses an LCD display with advanced In-Plane Switch (IPS) technology to increase resolution and brightness, and support a wider viewing angle and better color quality.

Resolution is enhanced further in Apple's system by using smaller pixels, raising the number on the screen to 326 per inch rather than 160 for the iPhone 3 GS screen. The LCD/IPS combination was first used on the iPad. By contrast, "Amoled" achieves its effects by using sub-pixel rendering and other advantages at greater range of colors, faster response time, thinner displays and reduced power.

Apple's iPhone 4 continues to require LED backlights, which some critics have been quick to point out.

The main new hardware feature of the iPhone 4 was its ultra-high resolution display, using a technology called Retina Display, which CEO Steve Jobs said was superior to the main option for top end phones.

For its part, Amoled is dominated mostly by Samsung and is a newer technology that some wireless industry observers say hold a lot of promise.

According to analysts at iSuppli, LCD screens amounted to 1.6 billion units last year, while "Amoled" was in at just 20.5 million units. However, its growth rate should be ninefold between then and 3 to 4 years from now, compared to 26.6 per cent for LCD displays.

It is still unclear how far Apple's alternative is exclusive to the iPhone or whether it will get traction elsewhere, but we will keep you posted as new developments arise.

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Source: iSuppli.