Mannerisms

Rival phone makers are, apparently, welcoming the iPhone launch, scheduled for June 29th, because it may kick the slow-growth market for high-end phones into life.

Consumers have been stubbornly preferring low-end, easy to use phones on which they simply make and receive phone calls, to the super-duper, 'full-featured', massively complex, need-to-be-a-rocket-scientist-to-be-able-to-use type phone which the manufacturers would love us to buy becasue they get more margin.

If the iPhone makes smartphones popular, it will be a massive boost for the whole mobile phone industry. Analysts In-Stat, in a new report, says US cellphone users have not taken to smartphones. Judging by the state of the US wireless networks, that's not particularly surprising. It's pretty amazing just to get through a call without it dropping in the US.

The iPhone could, however, change all that, and Apple is expected, by Merrill Lynch, to sell 4m of its phones this year and 12m next year.

The iPhone's US launch is expected this month with a version which supports GSM and GPRS but not 3G. It is expected to cost over $500. and be tied to the Cingular wireless network. "The software is at least five years ahead of anyone else," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs, last month. It is expected to have a tie-in to YouTube.

In September, a European version of the iPhone is expected to be announced which will include support for 3G.

According to the Taipei news site Digitimes, Taiwan's Quanta Computer will build the European version starting in September, and plans to ship 5m next year. Quanta calls it a 'smartphone'. That pretty much implies it will have a data connections, almost certainly 3G, and probably WiFi as well.

So far, solid state laptops have been a huge disappointment with this year's launches showing uninspired designs and huge price for the SSD versions.

Sony's solid state laptop launched last week at a price of £2099 for a 32GB hard drive. Sony's weighs 1.19kg including a DVD re-writer and has an 11 inch screen.

At least Sony only charged an extra $300 for the solid state option, whereas Dell charges $549 extra for its solid state laptop, and Fujitsu a huge $1,300 extra. In both cases for 32GB versions.

No one knows what the Apple solid state laptop will look like, but it's a safe bet that it will be super-thin, will weigh around 1kg, will probably have a 32GB SSD storage and, in visual and tactile terms, will be stunning.

Can it save the SSD laptop? Can iPhone save the smartphone? It's going to be an interesting June.

TOMORROW: TEN WORST CLICHES