The stellar entrance of Apple into the mobile phone arena has taken ancient carriers by surprise and has force them to put its marketing and design departments to work, some of them launching excellent and full features mobile contenders and others failing to impress us all, but launching a mobile phone that looks like a iPhone is one thing, the most difficult is the other missing part, make it appeals to the public as the iphone.

There is a very long road to kill the iphone, it is about time, but to get to kill the iphone won’t be an easy task, Apple doesn’t use to sleep on its laurels and when we think that the iPhone reaches its momentum it’s just when Apple start to rethinking the whole strategy.

To kill the iPhone rivals will need too many things to accomplish and while some of them could be easiers, the sum of them is a very very difficult task, let’s see what the iPhone rivals are missing when their devices are trying to take over the iphone:

1. Stop creating another iPhone
A bunch of iPhone killers look like the iPhone and sometimes behave better than it, but why would you buy a replica when you can have the real thing? The Meizu M8, the Samsung F700 and the LG KB850 | Prada look like a ripoff and while they have had astronomical sales, none of them reached the iPhone status. Rivals should focus on creating a whole new device, a complete and innovative device that extend the iphone usability, one that provides a higher level of satisfaction.

2. iPhone ≠ smartphone
With the introduction of the iPhone Apple wasn’t trying to conquer the smartphone segment, Apple was trying to create a whole new experience and that’s the main reason for the iPhone success, the iPhone started where the smartphones end and beyond, so comparing it with a smartphone is a waste of time, the iphone has its own category: iPhone. If rival carriers pretend to take over the iPhone, they may consider that the iPhone is a communication device, an iPod, a gaming device and a moble internet device. If they get to make a device that can do what the iPhone is doing, with the same level of usability, appeal and user satisfaction, then they are on the road to kill [iphone] it.

3. Focus = People
One of the most common mistakes make by the iPhone rivals is that they focused entirely on the iPhone and hasn’t taken people into consideration, providing all the iPhone features won’t help sell more phones, they should shift their focus to what people want not to match the iPhone features.

4. Apps, Apps and Apps.
One of the secret ingredients of the iPhone success is how quickly developers crowded the little device with thousand of applications, some useless some not, just applications to do whatever the end user want. Apple understood the application role and grouped them in the AppStore, the new cash cow that could soon pass itunes in profit.

5. The easier way to kill the iPhone is just wait for Apple to get out of ideas…. something that will only happen 100 or more years after Steve Jobs left Apple or die, there are too many prototypes at Apple of devices that Steve considered out of time that can power Apple ideas engine for many years to come.

By the time any competing device reaches the iPhone level of appeal, then Apple will be launching the next iPhone, a complete redesign that abandon the old iPhone ideas…. Apple is not sleeping.

Read more about the iphone killers here: Top 20: The iPhone Killers.