Telstra, the largest mobile phone network in Australia, has dealt their chances of carrying the iPhone when it is released a significant blow with a strange statement today.

Greg Winn, operations chief at Telstra launched what can only be described as a stupidly uninformed attack on the iPhone.

Winn commented:

There’s an old saying - stick to your knitting - and Apple is not a mobile phone manufacturer, that’s not their knitting. You can pretty much be assured that Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and ZTE and others will be coming out with devices that have similar functionality.

I think people overreacted to it - there was not a lot of tremendously new stuff if you think about it.

It was maybe kind of cool on the touchscreen technology but touchscreen technology is another domain, so it’s only a matter of time before it went to the device.

What I’m not sure of is how much money are they willing to devote to all of the life cycle management and upgrades.

The iPhone will be a top seller thanks to the design, not the features. Has Telstra not heard how many Chocolate phones LG sold last year? Is the iPod so much better than other MP3 players that it deserves sales of 88 million units and a 90% market share?