For the fashion conscious who can afford a PRADA bag of over USD 3000, can now gleefully rejoice with a matching accessory—the PRADA phone. South Korea’s LG Electronics has joined hands with Italy's high-end apparel and accessories manufacturer, PRADA to produce this high-end phone.The companies are touting the PRADA Phone by LG as the first completely touch-screen mobile phone, apparently ignoring the fact that Apple introduced its own touch-screen iPhone a week before its release.The PRADA Phone by LG plays music and videos on a wide, LCD screen. It has a two-megapixel camera, eight megabytes of internal memory, and looks a lot like Apple's iPhone. The slick, button-free, touch-screen interface is particularly similar.Randy Guisto, IDC's Group Vice President of Mobility, Computing, and Consumer Markets, is not surprised by the comparisons. He says, "A lot of people will say it's an iPhone rival, because there are no other button less phones out there yet”. And even though the two phones share some of the same characteristics, he says, the PRADA phone is aimed at a high-end consumer, with plenty of extra cash to spend. When it hits European stores in late February, the 12-mm thick PRADA phone (model KE850) will cost about 600 Euros (equivalent to USD 780) in France, Britain, Germany and Italy.LG says countries in Asia, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, can expect the phone in late March. The Korean version is scheduled to launch in the second quarter of 2007. There's no word yet though on when and if it will launch in the U.S.
