Apple made a mistake. One of the critical things to understand about the cell phone market is that cell phone doesn’t lend itself to platform lock-in.

This is unlike the classic Mac-PC battle that Apple has been engaged in for the last couple decades – consumers switch manufacturers and software platforms on computers very rarely. The reasons for this are numerous – for example, consumers typically buy lots of software for their computers that they can’t take from one platform to another. Additionally, the interfaces of modern operating systems – while much improved over interfaces of old – still require time and effort to learn. These and other factors cause consumers to tenaciously resist change.

Conversely, in the cell phone market consumers might not change service providers very frequently but typically will change their physical phones once a year (non-scientific poll for your consideration). The barrier for consumers to move their phones is typically low – making calls remains the primary use of cell phones and the phone book continues to be the primary collection of stored data on phones. Placing a call on a cell phone is easy and other resources collected on phones such as text messages, ring tones and downloaded games typically considered expendable.

Which brings me to my point. I would rather have this phone than an iPhone. It’s got excellent industrial design, it’s got the features I care about and it likely wouldn’t cost $500+.

In my view Apple’s offering has already been eclipsed by Samsung and LG. Apple entered the music market and became the only real choice in music player – there’s no way they’re going to be able to pull this off with the iPhone, at least not for long. And that’s going to do more to diminish the Apple brand than an increase in their profits will offset.