TORONTO - Some gadget-hungry Canadians may be grumbling about being among the last to get Apple's iPhone, but that delay could turn out to be blessing.
They'll be spared from some of the growing pains that the new must-have accessory is sure to face, experts say.
The sleek iPhone is more than four months away from its scheduled release in the United States and up to a year away from reaching Canada but it's already facing an army of detractors who point out supposed shortcomings that take the sheen off that sexy touch-screen facade.
The size of the memory card, the price tag, the speed of data downloads, the exclusive phone contract, digital copyrights and the locked-in battery are among the complaints sending anti-iPhone blogs into overdrive since the gadget was unveiled in San Francisco on Jan. 9.
"Apple's going to learn a very very hard lesson in the cellular networks and dealing with wireless mobile data in the next 12 to 18 months," muses tech guru Andy Walker, a Toronto journalist and author.
"So perhaps Canada is going to be the beneficiary of that and by the time it gets here they will have ironed out all of the wrinkles. Perhaps. I hope."
Apple said the gadget would be released in the United States in June, in Europe late this year and in Asia next year. There was no mention of Canada but industry observers expect a late 2007 or early 2008 release.
With such a delay, it's possible that Canada's first glimpse of the gadget will be a second generation iPhone, agrees Ottawa tech watcher John Wiseman, an Apple fan with several versions of the iPod.
Whether the iPhone even appears in the United States as advertised -- or as named -- is up in the air since the device has yet to win approval from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the telecommunications sector.
A lawsuit filed there by Cisco Systems Inc. claims the name iPhone has been a Cisco trademark since 2000.
The iPhone could face a similar battle in Canada with Toronto-based Comwave Telecom Inc., which has been selling a voice-over-Internet service under the name iPhone since 2004.
Then there's Nortel Networks, which offers a phone message service remarkably similar to the iPhone's touted "Visual Voicemail" feature, also called "Visual Voicemail" by Nortel.
Nortel wouldn't comment on whether the iPhone would infringe on any of its trademarks if released in Canada.
There's plenty of time for Apple to work out the bugs, says Walker, but also plenty of time for its competitors to drum up rivals.
More touch-screen gadgets are on the horizon, he predicts, identifying RIM, Sony, Nokia and Kyocera Wireless as companies to watch.
"If they've got anything that even remotely can clone the iPhone or show that they're moving that way then certainly they will accelerate that if that's at all possible," Walker says.
"The boardrooms right now at the wireless companies are buzzing and buzzing loud and people are sweating a bit but they're also excited because this is going to legitimize wireless data on mobile. Apple's done them a favour, in a sense."
An unlikely, but possibly devastating, challenger to the iPhone could even come from the iPod, says tech writer Johnathan Fingus, suggesting a revamped music player would cannibalize iPhone sales.
Walker says an iPod overhaul is inevitable and predicts a 3.5-inch touchscreen like the iPhone's will be announced this spring.
"Apple is not going to leave us with an iPod black hole between now and when we get the iPhone here in Canada," says Walker.
In the meantime, Canadians wanting the iPhone as soon as possible could cross the border once it is released in the United States and bring it home, but they'll have to jump through a few hoops to get it to work here, say Wiseman and Fingus.
The SIM card would first have to be unlocked -- a potentially costly step -- and then the user would have to sign up for a plan with a GSM-based phone network like Rogers, since the proposed device only works on the GSM system.
A Rogers spokeswoman said Wednesday that customers with a U.S. iPhone should have no problems making phone calls here, but added it wasn't clear whether they'd be able to access the Internet.
So far, Rogers, the largest GSM-based network in Canada, has declined to say whether it will be home to a Canadian version of the IPhone.
