This holiday season, mobile phone makers and carriers are pushing some shiny new toys: cellphones with touch-sensitive screens like the one on the Apple iPhone.
The companies are hoping to duplicate the blockbuster success of the iPhone with models that, in their glassy minimalism, end up looking a lot like it. These include the G1, powered by the Android software from Google; the Instinct and Omnia from Samsung; the LG Dare; and most recently the much-anticipated BlackBerry Storm from Research In Motion.
But with consumers keeping a close watch on their bank balances, analysts and industry experts say, most touch-screen phones will have trouble getting onto the list of must-have gadgets for this season.
The surge of touch screens has its roots in the introduction of the iPhone on AT&T’s network in June 2007. That left rival carriers scrambling for comparable offerings.
“What you’re seeing right now is the first wave of competitors spurred by the media juggernaut for the iPhone,” said Ed Snyder, a telecommunications industry analyst with Charter Equity Research. Snyder said that when the iPhone hype hit, “no credible cell phone executive could not get a touch-screen phone started.”
Since its introduction, the iPhone, which is available in the United States only through AT&T, has helped the carrier steal customers from other carriers. Wireless service operators are concentrating on retaining current subscribers as much as they are trying to get new ones, said Charles Golvin, a principal analyst at Forrester Research. Part of that strategy, Golvin said, is offering perquisites like exclusive “pre-sales” of hot new models to subscribers.
Phone shoppers say carriers and contracts have a lot of influence on their decisions about phones. “I’m pretty sure my next phone will be a touch-screen,” said Vernon McIntosh, 40, a personal trainer from New York who is an AT&T customer.
McIntosh was in…