Apple Launches Blackberry Rival

Apple has launched the iPhone, a touch-screen handset that combines a mobile phone, internet access, and iPod music and video playback features.

The internet-ready iPhone will use the Apple OS X operating system and allow users to watch movies, download songs and store photos, as well as offering email, calendar and contacts software found in rival products such as the Blackberry.

Speaking at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said the product would revolutionise the mobile phone market the way Apple revolutionised personal computers with the Macintosh in the 1980s and more recently with the music download market due to the iPod.

Jobs claimed that the software capability of the iPhone puts it five years ahead of any other product in the mobile market, describing rivals’ mobile technology as “baby software”.

He also revealed that the company’s television set-top box, codenamed iTV, would be called Apple TV. Apple is launching the box in February in the US at a price of just over £150.

The iPhone rates as one of the slimmest smart mobile handsets around at 11.6mm thick. It also includes a two mega-pixel camera and will run with the Safari internet browser and access to products such as Google Maps.

Google’s search bar will be built into the iPhone browser, while a deal with Yahoo! will see a free email product offered to users. The iPhone will be available in the US from June, in Europe by the end of the year, and in Asia in 2008.

Apple: www.apple.com