Apple's Strategy Behind iTunes Mobile Phone

vishnu writes "CoolTechZone.com is running a story that analyzes Apple's strategy with ROKR. According to the author, the phone disappoints, but is this Apple's way of testing a potential market. Quote: "There was nothing wrong with the creative cells of the designers at Apple; ROKR is simply Jobs taking a calculated risk. He doesn't want a cell phone that doubles as an MP3 player to become too popular as that would cut straight into Apple's bread and butter product, the iPod. On the other hand, Jobs knows for a fact that in the future cell phones will play a huge role in portable digital music; therefore, he is hedging his bets. He wants to give people a taste of what is to come but at the same time, he wants to project phones as an extension but not a replacement of a portable music player. He's consequently hoping to discomfort Apple's competition with a cell phone that has nothing but iTunes going for it."

Comments

Re:Isn't it obvious?

[Brento]

product that nobody really wants apart from the usual Mac-zealot contingent who'd buy a turd if it droped from Steve Jobs' ass.

This phone is from Ed Zander's ass, not Steve's, because it's Motorola shit. Apple shit is identifiable by the white and pastel colors, and it has smooth, curved edges to make it easier on the body. Motorola shit has techy-looking colors and rough, almost serrated edges, because it's sold by phone companies, and they want you to feel it when they screw you in the pooper.

I can see it now...

[ZP-Blight]

Apple making the iPhone and instead of having numbers, they'd design it all cool so you'd use the mouse wheel as a rotary dial and you'll get hi-def surround "grrrringg" sound chirping out of the phone's spaker as you do it.

Enterprizing People...

[aBlooMoon]

Over at Gearlive.com they have a photo of someone duct-taping a RAZR and iPod Nano together overcoming the ROKR's 100 song limitation and still ending up with a smaller overall package than the ROKR.

Yes, it's a gag, but still relative proof that Apple is placing the 100 song limitation on Motorola for competition reasons.

Re:Convergence devices

[aussie_a]

I specifically do NOT want a device that does more than one thing.

Agreed. I have a typewriter for creating documents (OpenOffice), a console for playing video games (computer games), a telephone for talking to people (Skype), a video player (porn). This fandangled thing called a "computer" just does too many things, all of them poorly. Give me seperate devices any day.

Re:Convergence devices

[(A)*(B)!0_-]

Most car radios sold on the market these days play music and tell you the time!

MULTI-FUNCTION ALERT! MULTI-FUNCTION ALERT!

ABANDON CAR RADIO!!!

Re:Isn't it obvious?

[Cyn]

The phone is exactly like an existing Motorola model, except they changed a single center button into two - the original function, and the 'music' button.

Apple just licensed their shit and gave some tips on wiping.