The smartphone industry has been predicting an iPhone killer would emerge in just about every product release cycle of competing vendors.
The Racer?
While it is unlikely one device - such as the Droid X or HTC's EVO 4g - will knock the iPhone off of its perch, the Android platform is clearly stalling its momentum and will likely to overcome it at some point. In other words, the iPhone's dominance will be supplanted by many different smartphones that target different constituencies.
Consider, for example, the Racer, a new Android phone from China's ZTE. (via Motley Fool). Its display is only 2.8 inches, its Qualcomm chip runs at 600 Mhz and its camera clocks in at 3.2 megapixels. Then there is the price tag, which is what should be making Apple CEO Steve Jobs nervous, Motley Fool said - British carrier 3UK is offering the Racer for a little over $150 as a prepaid phone. No one who has their heart set on an iPhone 4, and can afford to buy one, will opt instead for a device like the Racer, Motley Fool acknowledges. The goal, though, "is to appeal to hundreds of millions of wireless users worldwide who would love to get their hands on a smartphone running an advanced operating system like Android, but who can't afford the headline-grabbing models."
Other similarly positioned phones include Huawei Technologies' Pulse Mini and the upcoming Motorola WX445, and numerous "grey market" Chinese-made device, it said. These phones are a bigger threat to Apple because they - and the number of users they will eventually attract - will do more to lure developers than one blockbuster device like the Droid.
Turning Point
This will be a key turning point in the Android versus iPhone platform wars because the development community is still up for grabs. Yes, it has been enamored with the iPhone but developers also recognize that many more people are outside of their reach if they remain with Apple. "It's easy to forget that the phone you or I have in our pockets are not the phones that the people who want to use the vast majority of mobile applications have," said Jerry Ennis, who has developed a mobile flirting social network called Flirtomatic. (via the Inquirer). Bottom line, the health of a platform, be it Android Marketplace or Apple iTunes, is measured in part by the number of interested developers, Christian Science Monitor explains. "And profitability is a major lure. If folks … can show there's money to be made on Android Marketplace, that will only draw more developers, which might boost sales of phones running Android. And if Android sales soar, so do sales of applications. It's a happy little circle."
