LG's 'Prada' Re-branding Enables Apple iPhone Comparisons

In a clever exercise of timely re-branding, LG unveiled a new front-end for its touch-screen KE850 handset, which already won a design award in December. Now, a special edition of the device that will bear the "Prada" brand solo is being touted as LG's "answer" to the Apple iPhone, even though the LG phone may actually have been among a few to force Apple's hand.

Though there may be a price to pay for being characterized as the first "me-too" device in its class, the Prada Phone makes over the steel-blue "desktop" background originally planned for the KE850, according to pictures, with a charcoal grey screen whose buttons are touch-sensitive.

The device is likely to do its biggest competition with the Apple iPhone on the blogs. While Apple's device will be largely sold in North America at first, the Prada Phone will make its way to European customers next month - including, of course, in Italy - and in staged Asian launches between March and June. A North American version does not appear to be in the cards as yet.

The biggest similarity between the two phones, besides the fact that both use a touch-screen panel, appears at present to be that both seek to serve a new segment of the market whose very existence has been doubted by analysts in recent days: the premium, fashion-phone user who is comfortable with mainstream features in a flashy package, but who may not require premium functionality just yet. LG touts the Prada Phone this morning as a tri-band EDGE phone with a 2 Mp camera and 8 GB of internal flash memory. That's not all that different from the buildout of Cingular's (AT&T's) Apple iPhone; and if LG sticks with EDGE, then it may need to wait for the Apple device's media cycle to subside a bit if it expects to nudge its way into the carrier's US product line.

Then again, if the recent naysayers are right about Apple's missing functionality turning off premium customers, then Prada may do well to restrict itself to the European market, where the brand's ambiance is arguably stronger anyway. LG plans to introduce the phone in Europe for 600 Euro (about USD$777).