One of the core points that Steve Jobs made at last Friday’s press conference over the iPhone 4 antenna debacle was that it wasn’t just his latest baby that had signal issues. Jobs said that smartphone makers such as HTC and Samsung faced similar problems with their handsets, and added that the antennae problem was “a challenge for the whole industry”.  His rivals however, disagree strongly.

An industry-wide problem or just a silly mistake from Apple?

Taiwan’s HTC said today that reception problems aren’t common on smartphones and Apple should address the problem on its own rather than blame competitors. “The reception problems are certainly not common among smartphones,” HTC chief financial officer Hui-Meng Cheng told the Wall Street Journal. “They (Apple) apparently didn’t give operators enough time to test the phone.”

Of course, most of you will know by now what happened last Friday – Jobs said the company was “not perfect”, admitted the “death grip” problem was a big error, proved he could laugh at himself by starting proceedings with the ‘iPhone 4 Song’ and also said Apple will offer free cases to iPhone 4 owners to alleviate the problem.

At the news conference, Apple also showed videos of tests it conducted that indicated similar signal drops when phones made by Research In Motion (RIM), HTC and Samsung are grasped by users. But, these claims have been met with anger across the industry.

Another report, in The Telegraph quotes RIM’s co-chief executives Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsille as saying: “Apple’s attempt to draw RIM into Apple’s self-made debacle is unacceptable. Apple’s claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public’s understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple’s difficult situation.”

The pair added, “One thing is for certain, RIM’s customers don’t need to use a case for their BlackBerry to maintain proper connectivity.”

According to the WSJ Samsung said the company “hasn’t received significant customer feedbacks on any signal reduction issue for the Omnia II” smartphone which was featured in Apple’s video. Jobs’ arguments were also swiftly rejected by Motorola, who have said they have deliberately avoided Apple’s approach of locating antennas on the phone’s edge.