According to Taiwan-based smartphone supply chain makers the iPhone is going to directly impact manufacture's like HTC, Samsung, Nokia and LG's release schedule. They go on to say that the OEMS will be pushing back their release schedules to Q2 to avoid directly competing with the iPhone 4S in the first quarter because "based on previous experience, sales of iPhone 4S will remain at peak in the first quarter of 2012 and then begin to decline."

This won't sit well with many phone lovers as news of this gets out, but when Apple has a Q4 like it just had, it tends to send ripples through the tech world and OEMs recognize they are up against a behemoth. Apple's overall impact on the smartphone market is getting to be very interesting indeed.

Source: DigiTimes