Saturday, October 20, 2007

HTC and Apple smartphone segments to cross in November

High Tech Computer (HTC) and Apple will cross one another's market segment for touch screen controlled smartphones in early November when HTC begins to push sales of its HTC Touch in the US and Apple starts selling its iPhone in Europe, according to sources in Taiwan's handset industry.

HTC and Sprint Nextel have jointly announced that they will start marketing on November 4 the CDMA-version of the HTC Touch through Sprint's channel in the US.

On the other hand, the iPhone is to debut in the UK, France and Germany starting at the end of this month or in early November, roughly a half-year after HTC began selling its HTC Touch in Europe in June.

O2 of the UK and T-Mobile of Germany are scheduled to start selling the iPhone on November 9, while Orange of France is to begin iPhone sales on November 29, according to a Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN) report.

Operating on the Sprint Mobile Broadband network, the HTC Touch will bring together email and other business applications with Sprint's exclusive multimedia content, including over-the-air music downloads and live TV and more, the companies said in a joint press release.

Through Sprint's sales channel, the HTC Touch will be priced at US$249.99 with a two-year subscriber agreement, according to the press release.

The HTC-Sprint pricing is competitive compared to the US$399 for a two-year subscriber contract for the 8GB iPhone from AT&T, contended market sources in Taiwan.

Furthermore, the HTC Touch supports 3G, while the iPhone supports only EDGE technology, the sources pointed out. However, the built-in memory of the HTC Touch, at 256MB ROM/128MB RAM, is lower than the iPhone's 8GB memory, the sources noted.

source

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