David Frith | May 27, 2008
THERE was a bit of a problem the other day at the Australian headquarters of Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC. The entire executive team, or pretty close to it, walked out, led by local marketing manager John Featherstone and the marketing manager.
Featherstone told the Channelnews website that HTC was applying Taiwanese marketing practices that would not work in Australia. "I do not want to go through the pain that this company will suffer due to their thinking and methods."He won't be back. Next day HTC put out a two-paragraph media statement: "Australia continues to be a key market for HTC. We are actively recruiting for a new country manager and building the local team.
"We have one of the most innovative ranges of smartphones available in Australia, and our presence here continues to grow. In the coming weeks, we will launch our most exciting product yet."
Doubleclick doesn't know who is right or wrong in this row but it does appear the squabble is over the marketing of that "most exciting product yet", due in coming weeks.
We have no doubt what that product is. Stand by for the HTC Touch Diamond, a 3G smartphone with built-in touchscreen technology, seen by some as a major challenger to Apple's iPhone - also likely to hit this country in June, according to trade whispers.
It's just one of a number of 3G smartphones now being rushed to market, all billed as potential iPhone killers in some of the more excitable sections of the media. (A smartphone is a mobile that offers extra PC-style functions.)
How deadly are these killers? We'll have to wait and see, but Doubleclick suspects the 3G iPhone sporting a new range of third-party applications will be alive and well for some time to come.
For interested road warriors, here's quick look at some of the would-be assassins:
• The Touch Diamond offers internet connections at up to 7.2Mbps using high-speed packet access (HSPA) technology, now widely used in Australia, most notably by Telstra's Next G service and by announced iPhone marketers Optus and Vodafone
HTC has revamped its TouchFlo software to give a 3D effect to screen images. Users will be able access photos, music, messages and use push email via the touchscreen.
It's not clear if HTC has gone as far as Apple, or some of the tablet PC makers, in more imaginative use of touch gestures. IPhone users, for instance, pinch an image between two fingers to make it smaller, or stretch them apart to make it bigger and they use a finger to flick through a collection of music album covers.
• Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian outfit that makes the popular BlackBerry handheld email gadget, has unveiled the BlackBerry Bold which, like the iPhone, will have both 3G and WiFi wireless connections to the internet. It's said to have an exceptionally sharp screen and sufficient processing power to make short work of downloading email attachments, streaming video and rendering web pages.
Users will be able to talk on the phone while sending emails and browsing the web, publicists say. RIM says the Bold will be "available from wireless carriers around the world beginning this summer". That's the northern-hemisphere summer, which runs from June 21 to September 22.
Alas, the Blackberry Bold won't have iPhone-style touch technology.
• A touchscreen for typing and navigation is expected to feature in another Blackberry, dubbed the Thunder in some reports, the 9600 in others. It is expected to rumble in the third quarter for use with CDMA, GSM and HSPA 3G services, with Vodafone tipped as exclusive carrier outside the US.
• Meanwhile the longest established smartphone maker, Palm, has launched its low-cost Centro in Australia. It has a limited touchscreen for use with a stylus and a miniature keyboard.
Telstra is selling the Centro, but not for use on Next G: it will operate on the older, slower GSM/GPRS network. It has camera, music, web browsing - if you can stand GPRS speeds - access to online maps and checks corporate email via push technology.
At $299 to Telstra prepaid customers, the Centro is quite a snap, but an iPhone killer it ain't. The only model in danger might be Palm's own Treo 680, which has near-identical specs apart from a larger screen, and goes for $799.
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