iPhone5

Apple unveiled its latest smartphone, iPhone5 on September 12 and like all its predecessors, this device too has sparked a frenzy in the global media and amongst the consumers.Columns of news print, acres of web media space and electronic media time has been devoted to the next generation iPhone and in debates whether this device is a worthy successor to Steve Jobs legacy of providing consumers with a device they will be proud to own.

In US,the internet pre order service for iPhone5 opened at a minute past midnight on friday 14 September and within an hour the entire inventory of iPhone 5 was sold out and Apple had to push back the scheduled shipping date from September 21 to September 28,2012.

Apple is expected to sell 10 million units of iPhone5 in just three days,when it goes on sale in few countries on September 21. Analysts estimate that Apple will sell around 58 million iPhone5 by the end of 2012.It is also estimated that iPhone will add between 0.25 and 0.5 percentage points to US economic activity in the fourth quarter, based on projected US sales of eight million.

These are block buster figures by any yard stick and help consolidate iPhone’s position as the world’s foremost stand alone smart phone.

Critics may argue that year end sales figures of Samsung mobiles will easily outpace the sale of iPhones. However Samsung has multiple range of smartphones in various price range and also the fact that Samsung is essentially a hardware manufacturer and the critical software for its current flagship smartphone Galaxy S3 as well as as for its other models is provided by Google’s Android operating system. Recently, Samsung has also been ordered by a US court to pay a fine of USD 1 billion to Apple for infringing on some of iPhone’s patents.

Samsung’s GalaxyS3 which was launched few months back in UAE, comes with LTE feature to enable downloads upto 1000 Mbps. However it is only in anticipation of iPhone5’s launch in

UAE that the two telecom providers Etisalat and Du are quoted as saying that they will be upgrading their infrastructure to make it compatible with the LTE.

Leaving aside the sales figures and technical or feature wise superiority,Samsung,Nokia and other assorted players can only lay claim to be the most desirable mobile phone manufacturer if and when any of their device is sold out within an hour of pre sale and when ordinary people start queuing up outside their stores two days before the device actually goes on sale.