Asian handset makers HTC and Samsung Electronics on Monday cast the latest rebukes to the assertion by Apple that the iPhone 4’s reception problems are shared by other smartphones, something the company showed in a video as it came under fire for the iPhone 4’s controversial wraparound antenna design.
“Apple should face its own problems,” HTC Chief Financial Officer Hui-Meng Cheng said Monday. ”The reception problems are certainly not common among smartphones…they (Apple) apparently didn’t give operators enough time to test the phone.”
Cheng added that Apple blaming other competitors for its own problems “is not acceptable.”
The sharp comments from Taiwan-based HTC come as the company is embroiled in a legal fight with Apple over smartphone technology patents. Apple this year has launched lawsuits against HTC over its alleged violation of more than a dozen Apple patents, including a patent for “slide to unlock” start-screen technology. HTC has struck back with a complaint filed to the U.S. International Trade Commission alleging that Apple violated five HTC patents, including patents related to power consumption in smartphones and how cellphones dial contacts from an address book.
South Korea’s Samsung Electronics, the world’s second-largest handset vendor by revenue behind Nokia responded on Monday to the antenna issue as well – but in softer tones, perhaps because Apple is major client. Samsung makes NAND flash memory chips that go into products like the iPod and the iPad.
“Based on years of experience of designing high quality phones, Samsung mobile phones employ an internal antenna design technology that optimizes reception quality for any type of hand-grip use,” Samsung said in a statement. It also said it will remain committed to designing smart phones that meet strict design and quality standards. A Samsung spokesman said separately the company “hasn’t received significant customer feedbacks on any signal reduction issue for the Omnia II” smartphone which was featured in Apple’s video.
At a new conference Friday, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs admitted the iPhone 4, which launched in June, loses reception when touched in the lower left corner and drops slightly more calls than its predecessor. He said Apple will offer free cases to iPhone 4 owners to alleviate the problem.
At the news conference, Apple showed videos of tests it conducted that indicated similar signal drops for phones from HTC, Samsung and BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion.
Source - Wall Street Journal
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