The BBC published an interesting article last Friday discussing how difficult Apple may find it to take market share from the likes of Nokia and Sony Ericsson in the mobile market.
In the article, writer Mark Ward comments that over 80% of people in the UK already have a mobile phone and that with the iPhone “Apple will not be creating a market, it will be muscling in on a lot of very established companies.”
Of most significance were the comments made by Sony Ericsson, who declined to discuss the iPhone directly, preferring instead to point out the drawbacks of touchscreens:
Gilles Oriol, product marketing manager for Western Europe at SonyEricsson, declined the opportunity to talk directly about Apple’s iPhone. “We do not comment on rival products,” he said.
But, he told the BBC News website, that he “doubted” that SonyEricsson would ever make a phone that only had a touchscreen.
“It must remain a good telephone first,” he said, “consumers are more willing to dial a number with the keyboard than they are to do it with a touchscreen.”
“Also,” he added, “the point about a touchscreen is that it affects battery time. You need a powerful battery because to use the touchscreen means it remains on all the time.”
