Trends of The Day

It's been nearly a a year since the iPhone was first released. No one knew exactly what the device would be like, or do, or how it would change the mobile phone landscape.

At the end of 2007, approximately 4 million iPhones had been sold, mostly in the US. That represents somewhere in the neighborhood of 1% of the total US subscribers carrying an iPhone.

At Movaya, we love the iPhone. Our COO, John, owns one and loves it. More importantly, we love the data that has been released about iPhone users, which we have reported on previously;

During his keynote appearance at the Mobile World Congress, AT&T Mobility president and CEO Ralph de la Vega called Apple's iPhone "a game-changer," noting that since AT&T exclusively launched the device in mid-2007, mobile data consumption has grown dramatically. According to de la Vega, 95% of iPhone owners regularly surf the web, even though 30% had never done so prior to iPhone ownership.

Well, now it is time to see how the other handset makers (Motorola, Samsung, LG) and wireless carriers (T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon) will respond to the iPhone craze. Clearly, the form factor is a hit with consumers, based on all the impressive data.

This week at CTIA, Sprint and Samsung announced the first iPhone like device - The Samsung Instinct.

The Samsung Instinct will be available in June for a yet undetermined price. Executives hinted that the price would be substantially lower than the $399 for the cheapest iPhone. Like the iPhone, the Instinct lacks a keypad and has just a few buttons. Most of the functions are accessed by touching the screen.

The Instinct will have a few features the iPhone lacks. For one, it will be the first consumer phone in the U.S. to use EV-DO Rev. A, the fastest cellular broadband technology available on the Sprint and Verizon Wireless networks.

AT&T Inc. has phones that use a competing technology with equivalent speeds, but the iPhone is not one of them: It runs on a comparatively slow network, supplemented by Wi-Fi access.

The Instinct also contains a Global Positioning System chip, for location applications. The iPhone lacks one, but it can use cellular and Wi-Fi signals to determine an approximate position.

The Instinct certainly won't be the last iPhone killer - it's going to be fun to watch these devices hit the market and watch as the other 99% of cell phone subscribers in the US get hooked on the mobile web.