Mobile industry looks to tack new partnership course in the smartphone space

Almost three years after the iPhone first arrived on the scene, the mobile industry as a whole still seems to have not been able to come out with anything quite like it.

Though there have been a number of comparable devices from players like Palm, Motorola, HTC and Nokia, these have been able to match the iPhone only in certain aspects. And it became quite clear at the recent FT World Telecoms conference that the mobile industry as a whole has not yet been able to put together a worthwhile competitor to Apple's iPhone.

According to analysts, though handset vendors do appear to have a fair idea about what they have to do to close the gap on Apple in the smartphone space, they seen to be all at sea when it comes to replicating the level of experience Apple has created for high-end mobile services.

At the FT conference held in London senior figures at Vodafone, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom went candid on their failure to device the right approach to mobile services and each speaker from the companies cited the iPhone experience as the benchmark they were aiming to attain.

With the exception of Vodafone and its 360 initiative, others seemed to be clueless about what their response would be to the iPhone.

Analysts say the admission of ignorance is a huge positive, because the mobile industry is admitting that it is not making the most of technology (mobile broadband) available to it and it needs help to do so.