Rather than a cheap Chinese look-alike we finally have a serious competitor to the iPhone. For a normal consumer who is used to Samsung already and thanks to Samsung’s much larger distribution network it looks like some interesting things will happen.

The two look almost identical. But the Galaxy has a bigger screen. Even with the iPhone 4 Retina Display, the Galaxy has a Super Amoled screen, so both seem far sharper and brighter and better than most other screens in the store – but the Galaxy is significantly bigger. Suddenly the Samsung is a very compelling player.

Samsung also has several cheaper phones that it can then sell to those customers who don’t want to pay the price of a top line smartphone.

While we are on Samsung, the first Bada phone, the Wave has passed 1 million unit sales. Thats pretty solid for approximately one quarter worldwide. Its nowhere near Apple’s iPhone 4 selling 1.7 million units in a couple of days, but remember, thats not the right comparison. The comparison is to the original launch, first phone on a new operating system. So the right comparison is to the original iPhone 2G launch of 2007. And 1 million Waves compare rather well in that context – far better than for example Google’s highly visible ’superphone’ launch of the Nexus One. Thus Bada is already selling better for Samsung than its Symbian and MS Windows Mobile based phones, and looks to be well on target to be about a third of all Samsung smartphones sold in 2010, behind only Android devices.

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