T-Mobile aims to bite into Apple share

T-Mobile USA's so-called Dream Phone, the first handset with Google Inc mobile software, is unlikely to match the debut of its top competitor, the iPhone.

T-Mobile may sell fewer than 500,000 of the phones in the next three months because they don't have the same cachet as the iPhone, Forrester Research Inc analyst Charles Golvin in San Francisco said. Apple Inc sold more than a million of its latest iPhones in the first three days, and 1.39 million of the original devices within three months of their June 2007 debut.

"I doubt that anything can match the hoopla that has been created by Apple," said Shiv Bakhshi, who tracks mobile devices for research company IDC in Bellevue, Washington. "That cult following may be missing with the Google phone."