Gary
Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s second-largest maker of mobile phones, began selling its touch- screen Instinct handset for $70 cheaper than Apple Inc.’s new iPhone to win sales in the U.S. ‘Bloomberg reported today.
Sprint Nextel Corp.is all set to proffer the phone, which can access e-mail and even boradcast live television programs, starting today for $129.99 per unit. Moreover, apparently one up over the Apple’s latest phone, the Instinct can also record videos.
‘The Instinct joins High Tech Computer Corp.’s Diamond and LG Electronics Inc.’s Vu in challenging the iPhone, which helped Apple become the second-largest maker of so-called smart phones in the U.S. in less than a year.’ Reports Bloomberg
‘Still, like other touch-screen models, Samsung’s new phone is “no match” for Apple’s product because it fails to replicate the strength of the iPhone’s software, according to technology columnist Walt Mossberg.
“I still feel like the Instinct is inferior to the iPhone, in part because it seems so obviously to be imitating it, but falls short in quite a number of areas,” said Jan Dawson, an analyst at London-based researcher Ovum. “There’s been so much hype and excitement around the iPhone 3G that almost no matter what Sprint does to publicize this launch it will be very hard to compete with the iPhone buzz.”
In all probability, the number of iPhones that Apple sells will be double, nay quadruple the number of Instinct Phones that Samsung could manage to sell. Apple declined to make an official stance on the Samsung contender.
June 21, 2008
I can understand why Samsung would try to so hard to imitate the iPhone, yet have no real selling point. Yes, the price might be lower, but if the software is so inferior than they aren’t going to sell many units. It just seems like they wasted R&D among many other things for no reason.
June 22, 2008
I think that I would settle for Samsung rather than Apple because they are cheaper. I don’t really believe that the more higher the price of technology the better it is. I think that we can compare this with AMD and Intel because they are the computers that are competing on each other in terms of sales. Intel may have been faster but that doesn’t mean that AMD is slow.
June 24, 2008
I can see people going for the cheaper version…but at the same time, I think I would stick with the apple only because it’s apple and the samsung one doesn’t have as great technology as the apple. It is clearly an imitation of the iphone…it’s almost the same exact thing.
June 24, 2008
There are both pros and cons of instinct over iphone. as dreamr802 said, it is an imitation but cheaper price would be a fact considered by many. iPhone is more of a style element than a phone, but one thing is for sure samsung won’t be able to cope with apple’s sound technology.
June 25, 2008
I wouldn’t call Samsung ‘inferior’ in anything. There’s a reaosn why they are the second-most popular electronics company after all. I bought a touchscreen mp3-player from them that was perfect in every which way, which I prefer even over iPod. I think that for the price, they wil be proving to be good competition for Apple in what they can offer, and in what Apple’s products can offer.
June 27, 2008
Samsung is no way inferior, but a lookalike always faces wrath of customers unless it is way better than original in atleast one aspect. 70$ is a cost difference but it may not come near the sound quality apple delivers
July 2, 2008
Samsung isn’t inferior in the least. But there are faithful followers of apple who will still buy the apple product because it is an apple product. It’s just like the ipods that are made in Hong Kong that look like the ipods, and do everything the ipod does. (except be compatible with itunes that is) They are cheaper by far than an apple ipod, but a lot of people won’t buy them because they’re not an apple product.