One way that phone makers can come up with truly competitive products is to focus more on design, he said. "This is just one piece, but if they want to build something similar or better to the iPhone, development needs to be driven by someone from industrial design," he said. "To compete ... they need to have some designer at the head of the mobile division and let that person be fully in charge."

HTC is best known for making Windows Mobile phones, but it recently became the first manufacturer to build a phone for Google's Android operating system.