Smartphones abound, giving the iPhone competition

News item: Apple and AT&T sold more than 1 million new iPhones in the first weekend of availability for the iPhone 3GS.

Yes, if it’s midyear, there must be a new iPhone model to drive Apple fans crazy and make them rush to hand over their cash for the latest gadget (priced at $199 or $299, depending on memory capacity). This being the third straight year of the iPhone phenomenon, the iPhone 3GS rush wasn’t as frenzied as those seen in the past two years. Standing in line for a week? That’s so 2007.

Just as the iPhone craze is settling down, the popular wireless handset is getting some serious competition, as the smartphone market defies the downturn in consumer electronics sales.

In the past two years, Apple sold more than 21 million iPhones. Throw in the iPod touch, which does nearly everything the iPhone does except make calls, and Apple’s moved 37 million mobile devices.

Every other manufacturer of wireless handsets says they have an “iPhone killer,” yet the iPhone shows no signs of becoming a zombie product. It’s more fitting to discuss iPhone challengers, as not everyone can afford an iPhone, and not everyone wants one.

The hot new challenger is the Pre smartphone made by Palm, exclusively available from Sprint. It’s about $200, so it’s comparably priced with the lower-end iPhone 3GS.

Apple’s strongest competitor in the smartphone segment remains Research In Motion with its BlackBerry models. The BlackBerry Storm is the latest and greatest in the line; it’s selling for about $150.

The G1, the “Google phone,” is a strong seller for T-Mobile. Made by HTC and running Google’s Android mobile device software, the G1 is the vanguard of Android-based products and also is priced at $150. T-Mobile is about to launch its second Google phone made by HTC, called the myTouch, which will sell for $199 (that seems to be a popular pricepoint in this market!).

Nokia, the world’s largest maker of wireless handsets, isn’t ceding the smartphone market to Apple and RIM, rolling out its N97 touchscreen phone this month. It’s priced around $699, making it the most expensive model out there at the moment.

What makes or breaks a new smartphone are the applications available, and Apple’s still the champ there. The App Store has more than 50,000 software programs for the iPhone and iPod touch, many of them free, and the total apps available seems to grow exponentially for the Apple mobile devices.

There were an estimated 139 million smartphones sold in 2008, despite a raging recession around the world, and market researchers see that number doubling in 2010 as more people regard the gadgets as not just convenient but necessary for keeping up with e-mail, surfing the Web, finding restaurants and other businesses, and so many other chores. Plus chatting on the phone, of course.