From T-Moblile’s G1 to Verizon Wireless’ BlackBerry Storm, there are a lot of exciting smartphones due to be released in the next few months… but can anything, no matter how innovative, displace the iPhone in the minds of consumers?

To get a sense of which of the current crop of mobile devices were appealing to iPhone researchers, I took a look at Compete’s data to see what percentage of the online iPhone researchers on AT&T’s site were looking at other mobile devices in July and August - the first two months that the new iPhone 3G was available.

• Sprint’s Samsung Instinct seems to have been the iPhone’s best competition so far; in both July and August, it was the alternative most viewed by iPhone 3G researchers.
• Consideration of these iPhone alternatives is pretty steady, and in some cases, increasing. The AT&T Tilt and the LG Dare were viewed by more iPhone 3G researchers in August than they were in July, while consideration of the other three fell by a fraction of a percentage point.

Clearly, it’s possible to capture the attention of iPhone researchers with other devices. Now that the people who had to have an iPhone right away are out of the market, the consumers who are still shopping may be more receptive to the alternatives.

But the big question is, what makes a good iPhone alternative? So far, the touchscreen seems to be a key factor – the Instinct, Dare, and VU all have one – but there’s clearly more to the appeal to the iPhone than that.

Nokia is answering the integration of music with the iPhone (via iTunes) with the “Comes with Music” feature. The openness of Google’s Android operating system for new applications and the marketplace may draw consumers to the new T-Mobile G1; there’s even talk that the new batch of BlackBerrys may include an applications center. It may not be possible to replicate the iPhone’s popularity, but we’ll see over the next few months if anyone else can even come close.

This holiday season promises a few answers to the iPhone from Apple’s competitors. So far, the T-Mobile G1, the Blackberry Thunder, and the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 look like they could be contenders.

Smartphones, with their higher contract prices and upfront costs, tend to attract more affluent consumers. In this economic climate, where consumers may have less disposable income or just be unwilling to spend it, extending that appeal to a larger and already crowded market will be a challenge.

Still, the fact that millions of iPhones have been sold since July suggests that a high-end device’s appeal could extend beyond those in the highest income brackets. The $200 price drop and decision to sell the iPhone 3G at Best Buy may have been bids to broaden the device’s appeal, but do they seem to be working?

And they have, can other smartphones broaden their appeal too?

• Since the iPhone 3G was announced in June, the skew toward $100K+ income-bracket researchers has become less pronounced
• After mirroring the overall handset researcher population at the iPhone 3G’s announcement and launch, shoppers in the $60-100K income bracket were 8% more likely to be researching the iPhone 3G in August
• Even though people in the <$30K and $30-60K income brackets are significantly less likely than most to research iPhone 3G, they have been making up an increasing proportion of the research population since the device was announced

So, although the gaps are narrowing, the iPhone still appeals most to people with incomes over $60K. What does this mean for the new crop of smartphones?

People may become more price sensitive because of the economy, but iPhone is so popular with consumers any new smartphone hoping to appeal to a large audience would almost have to be priced at or below $199. T-Mobile’s G1 will follow this trend and sell for $179 with a contract.

A preferable strategy to reducing price, but probably a tougher one, will be providing consumers with a viable alternative that offers the same or better usability with a different twist. Devices with different form factors like flip phones and combining touchscreens with physical keyboards might help sway some people. The benefits of open-source based operating systems like Android may change minds. But we’ll need to wait until the end of Q4 to find out.

For more on the demographics of the iPhone 3G’s appeal, check out our September 5th newsletter.

The much anticipated T-Mobile G1, the HTC-made answer to the iPhone that will run Google’s Android operating system, was announced Tuesday. Like other smart phones before it, the G1 will have both a touchscreen and a physical QWERTY keyboard. When the hyper-popular iPhone already features a virtual touch screen keyboard, does it make sense to offer both a touchscreen and physical QWERTY keyboard to consumers?

According to our data, blending touchscreens and keyboards may be a great way to hedge your bets. As popular as touchscreens may be, interest in QWERTY phones hasn’t fizzled since touchscreen phones have been available.

• Despite the hype around touchscreen devices like the iPhone and the Instinct, interest in a physical QWERTY keyboard has remained strong, somewhere between 35% and 45% of all handset shoppers. Touchscreen interest is increasing but has generally been in the range of 10-25% of shoppers over the same period of time.
• Even though consumer interest is strong, QWERTY phones have only made up about 25-30% of carriers’online portfolios.

When considering the recent strong interest in QWERTY phones, and the strong press attention that touchscreen devices have been getting, combining the best elements of the two may be a good play for OEMs and carriers.

We’ll wait and see how the G1 fares in October.

I love new cell phone releases – a new cell phone makes me as happy as a kid in a candy store! Partly because I study cell phones here at Compete, but I also love these nifty little contraptions and all of the fun stuff we can do with them these days. Every new cell phone model boasts cooler features and smarter applications then its predecessors. Still, the allure of a cell phone comes not only from its features and software, but from the way it looks.

Last week, at the CTIA trade show, RIM announced their newest BlackBerry model. The new BlackBerry Pearl 8220, a flip phone version of the popular original, will appear exclusively at T-Mobile later this year.

Color me excited to see this new wonder added to the ‘miracle’ that is the BlackBerry. A flip version of the Pearl?! (I wonder if John McCain had a hand in this…)

This announcement got me thinking about how others will perceive the new addition to the BlackBerry family.

In August, only about 7% of smartphone shoppers looked at flip phone models. Thinking that this could just be due to a lack of flip phone models in the smartphone space, I took a deeper look at the interest smartphone shoppers are showing for flip phones.

Read as: 3% of smartphone shoppers also viewed the LG Voyager at Verizon Wireless in the month of August 2008.

• The level of interest here is very low – even the popular Voyager only sees interest from about 3% of smartphone shoppers
• The flip phone most interesting to smartphone shoppers, the LG Voyager, is itself a smartphone

So, based on the interest (or lack thereof) that smartphone shoppers are showing in flip phone models, the immediate outlook for this new BlackBerry Pearl flip phone is a little bleak.

However, now that BlackBerry is offering a flip phone, it’s possible the numbers will tell a different story in the coming months. Clearly they’re going for a new look to shake up the classic look of a BlackBerry. Could this be the start of something big for smartphone shoppers across the country? Will we start seeing more flip versions of smartphones? I’ll be watching the new model releases with excitement!

Analysts generally weren’t too impressed with Steve Jobs’ announcements about new iPod features and lower prices last week in San Francisco. But in light of the new iPhone 3G released in July with a lot of hype and a lower price, the new $229+ price tag on the iPod Touch was an interesting move.

Is Apple is trying to make the Touch appeal to people who want an iPhone but are bound to their carriers? Maybe. Consumer behavior seems to be saying that the Touch is a device more for iPhone fans than people who are only thinking about options in the iPod family.

The chart below looks at traffic to the Touch, iPod Nano, and iPhone portions of the Apple site.

• Interest in the iPod Touch was generally low, but probably got some momentum from the iPhone in July and August, surpassing traffic to the iPod Nano during both months.
• Interest in the iPhone has been higher than the iPod Nano or the Touch since February, with especially strong months when the 3G was announced and launched.
• Interest in the iPod Nano was strong throughout Q4 2007, and peaked in December, suggesting it may have been the most likely of the three devices to be considered as a gift.

Not only does the iPhone’s momentum seem to have increased interest in the iPod Touch, but those who have been interested in Touch are more likely to look into an iPhone.

• iPod Touch researchers have been researching the iPhone an average of ~10% more frequently than they research the iPod Nano, even during the holiday season.
• Cross-consideration seems to mirror the iPhone’s momentum in June and July 2008.

Will the momentum in iPhone interest and last week’s price cut lift the iPod Touch when it comes to sales from now until the end of the year?

Despite the iPhone’s popularity, consumers in the current economic climate may not be willing to shell out between $229 and $399 for an iPod Touch if they have the option of giving a Nano for $149-199. Then again, interest and momentum in the Touch could increase as the iPhone and other high-end mobile devices like it are sold at big box consumer electronics stores. In combination with the price drop on the iPod Touch, wide availability of the iPhone could open a new and bigger market for the Touch as a music and media player to grab market share from the Zune and the PSP.

Apple’s announcement last week might be bigger news than we think.

Not long ago, I bought a brand new 46” LCD HDTV just in time for football season so I could see every individual blade of grass swoosh by as my beloved Patriots went for touchdown after touchdown. And then… well, you all know what I’m talking about, so I don’t need to repeat it here.

Still, football season has just begun and I still have an HDTV hanging on the wall. So to keep my mind off Brady and the Pats, I decided to focus on the TV itself, wondering if my (somewhat impulsive) shopping patterns were typical of other consumers out there.

In terms of shopping, it appears that most people aren’t looking for TVs during the pre-season like I did, but are waiting until the promotion-filled holiday period and just in time for SuperBowl Sunday. The chart below shows last year’s interest in HDTVs at two of the top consumer electronics websites.

• Interest remained pretty flat throughout fall 2007, then spiked during the holidays. This type of jump is expected, but HDTVs sustained some of that interest through January and into early February - the Super Bowl was on Feb 3rd.
• The last two weeks of January generated a bump in interest for both companies as consumers prepared to get a new TV for the big game. Best Buy interest increased 16%, while Circuit City’s increased 43%

Now I only really considered two HDTV brands, Sony and Samsung, both because I’ve had good experiences with other products of theirs in the past. This type of halo effect is interesting, and I wanted to figure out if consumers mainly think about these companies in terms of TVs or other products. Below is a chart of the percentage of search referrals to each company’s website where the searcher used TV-related terms (HDTV, DVR, etc). I compared fall 2007 with holiday 2007 to get a sense if consumers’ search behavior changes from season to season.

• In September 2007, 5.5% of Samsung’s search referrals came from TV-related terms, as compared to 4.4% for Sony. This means that the vast majority of searchers weren’t necessarily looking for TVs on either site; Samsung visitors searched mostly for mobile phone-related items, Sony’s tended to look for laptops.
• Despite a large increase in shopper interest from the fall to the holiday period that was reflected in the first chart, the percentage of searchers looking for TVs on these two sites actually decreased heading into the holiday season

This tells me that there really could be a halo effect for both of these companies. Good experiences with one product that Samsung (or Sony) makes could lead to increased mindshare for another.

This presents an opportunity for companies that manufacture multiple categories of products to cross-promote and upsell products to increase consideration and mindshare among consumers that already have a favorable impression of the brand. On Tuesday, Jim Nail of Cymfony actually talked about the importance of social media on consumer mindshare in an ARF webcast . Playback is free for ARF members.

And as for football season? I’ll still spend most Sundays on the couch rooting for the Pats, hoping that lightning can strike again with Matt Cassel as it did originally with Tom Brady in 2001. And no matter what happens, I’ll be watching every tiny detail of it in 1080p, with 120Hz refresh rate and SRS TruSurround XT audio. Gotta love technology.