Apple’s Biggest Rivals this Christmas

20/07/2007

The much-lauded UK arrival of the Apple iPhone looks set for some stiff competition this Christmas party season.

Three new handsets are due to be launched by rival manufacturers, and all will be vying for the Christmas bestseller spot.

The HTC Touch is a direct competitor of the iPhone, with a 2.8-inch touchscreen, a two-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, and a microSD card slot for music storage. Some users may find the phone’s inclusion of the Windows Mobile 6 operating system, and all the email-synchronising document-viewing benefits that come with it.

Arguably the strongest iPhone rival this Christmas is the W960, the Sony Ericsson W960 Walkman has a 2.6-inch touchscreen, Wi-Fi, a 3.2 megapixel camera, 8GB of memory, and 3G connectivity. The phone also has 27 hours of music playback on one battery charge along with music software to identify tracks playing in public.

Nokia also plans to give Apple a run for its money this Christmas party season. The company is reported to be bringing out a new music-focused N95, with 8GB of internal memory to store tunes on, as well as a five megapixel camera and full GPS.

Ironically, the Apple iPhone may even face competition from its own manufacturers. There are rumours that a second handset, dubbed the iPhone Nano may go on sale in time for the Christmas party season in the USA, and will likely appear in the UK shortly afterwards.

The second Apple iPhone is reportedly of a smaller form factor and combines Apple iPod functionalities, such as the click-wheel interface, with basic mobile phone features. The Apple iPhone Nano is likely to be much cheaper than the original iPhone, which is expected to retail in the UK for about £300.