I was always under the impression that RIM with BlackBerry and Palm with their Treo ruled the smartphone business until I came across this article which reports that Motorola Q was the top seller between August to October 2006, one of the reasons for Motorola smartphone business clocking a growth rate of more than 104 per cent, putting it in the number three position in terms of 2006 sales behind RIM.

You might find it even more surprising when I tell you that its not Palm but Nokia that was the unequivocal leader in 2006 selling almost one in two smart mobiles based on report from research company IDC.

So lets see how one of the top sellers of 2006, the Motorola Q compares to Apple’s revolutionary iPhone, probably the most anticipated gadget in history.

Document viewer: The Q comes preloaded with Picsel Viewer so
that you can view but not edit Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files; the
app also lets you open PDFs.

Pricing: The Motorola Q is a far cheaper option than the $499 and $599 iPhone.

Third Party Applications: Third-party software for the Microsoft Smartphone are abundantly available and there are version optimized for the new OS features. It’s unlikely that an investment in Microsoft Smartphone would leave you wanting for any application.

Battery: The battery is removable (read user replaceable), and an extended cell is available for purchase, although it will add just 0.1 inch of bulk. This might no longer be an advantage based on an iPhone rumor that user replaceable might be one of the iPhone features that Apple has not yet revealed.

Apple iPhone advantages VS Motorola Q:

iPod: iPhone is a not just a phone it is widescreen iPod with touch controls that lets you enjoy all your content including music, audiobooks, videos, TV shows, and movies on a beautiful 3.5-inch widescreen display (BlackBerry Curve only has a 2.5 inch screen). The BlackBerry curve does have a media player, however with all the iPod features and 4 GB/8 GB space, it makes the iPhone the best music phone.

Visual Voicemail: The iPhone lets you select and listen to voicemail messages in whatever order you want — just like email using a revolutionary new feature called the visual voicemail.

Advanced Safari browser: iPhone lets you see any web page the way it was designed to be seen, then easily zoom in by simply tapping on the multi-touch display with your finger which will change mobile browsing for the good.

Wi-Fi: iPhone is also Wi-Fi enabled and supports Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) which gives you an option to switch to faster Wi-FI networks instead of using EDGE which aren’t that slow but also aren’t very fast.