The emergency press conference that Apple hastily put together seems to have left the Cupertino based developer-manufacturer in a worse position than originally intended.
The event was lead by none other than Steve Jobs himself, while undoubtedly a genius among his peers, he has also gained the reputation of being the crankiest old man in the tech industry. And this time, he has managed to bring in other mobile phone makers into this little presentation –an act that the same companies are not too happy about.
Right after the Apple conference, Research in Motion (developers of the BlackBerry and the BlackBerry OS) have stated that their mobile devices should not have been part of Jobs’ presentation, after all, BB phones do not need to have a casing just so they would work properly. Finnish phone maker Nokia also gave out a statement regarding their antenna designs and how they tested their products. Nokia was not particularly named by Apple, but the implication that “all phones are equal” meant that Jobs was generalizing the entire industry.
Samsung, whose Omnia 2 Windows Mobile smart phone was mentioned directly and shown off in the presentation, has yet to make an official statement (like RIM’s open letter) but their spokesperson has already given out what might be a glimpse at the Korean manufacturer’s official stand, part of which says that “The antenna is located at the bottom of the Omnia 2 phone, while iPhone’s antenna is on the lower left side of the device. Our design keeps the distance between a hand and an antenna.”
Motorola is another company that was not named in the conference, but has also decided that Apple has said too much. The phone maker stated that “it is disingenuous to suggest that all phones perform equally”.
They are quite right: the Apple iPhone 4 is the only device among its peers that is suffering from such a unique problem.
Tags: antenna, Apple, Motorola, Samsung, Steve-Jobs