So which mobile maker will make an iPhone copy then?

Found this post via Ars. Tech - Users' love affair with iPhone stumps Mobile World panel!

Typical - we noted last year on more than one occasion that Planet Mobile are unable to see the blindingly obvious sometimes.....anyway, the story goes that at Barcelona 3GSM:

A blue-ribbon panel of human behavior and technology experts at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain agreed that the best recent advance in the mobile telecommunications user space came not from a mobile telecom company but from Apple Inc. — the iPhone.

Astounding insight there......but the devils in detail are even more revealing:

The panel, whose title was It's the User Experience, Stupid agreed that iPhone represents a model for mobile operators to follow, but they reached little agreement on how to follow.

One direction, advocated by Lucia Predolin, international marketing and communications director for Buongirono S.p.A. of Milan, Italy, is to manipulate users by identifying their "need states" — including such compulsions as "killing time," and "making the most of it" — and fulfilling them subliminally.

Adobe's Murarka proposed a more technological approach to improving the user experience, satisfying the mobile phone subscriber through better interface design. Sarah Lipman, co-founder and R&D director for Power2B, suggested an almost mystical solution, somehow tapping into users' "neural networks" to navigate a mobile phone interface "using touch and pre-touch input."

In other words...we don't like the message, we can't shoot a messenger, so lets massage the message instead. But sadly, this ploy was pithily nailed by the TI Guy.

Panelist Mike Yonker, general manager of worldwide strategy and operations for Texas Instruments' wireless terminals business unit, said that the way for the user to get the rich content now available on a mobile handset is through the "search" function. But this isn't so easy. He compared the limitations of a mobile handset to a full personal computer screen.

Searching on a computer, he said, is like going to a store, where the customers sees every product displayed, and can make comparisons, touch the products, even try things on for size. Doing the same search on a mobile, he said, but like trying to shop in the same store but "through a drive-up window." No matter how much stuff is in the store, you can only find out through the cashier at the drive-up window.

Sheer Brilliance

Read the post, also the comments - I thought this one from one of the commentators was very insightful:

....the competition always looks at the ipod or iphone and breaks it down into parts. Then they assume they can boost the specs on features at a lower price and have a winner. Apple surpasses the competition based on the sum of its parts, which in turn is a large part of the experience. Add a really well thought out yet simple human interface and you have something that everyone can get into. My father-in-law and parents, all technophobes, now text me and keep digital schedules because the technology in the iphone is accessible. Apple also knows how to throw features away. Don't give the user too many options because in the end it is less productive.

Its very interesting - when the iPhone came out we wondered if the mobile handset makers would rush out to copy it...and as yet, the answer is no! The comment above explains why very well.

Or could it be that, despite the critical acclaim, its just a tad overpriced