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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."
It is a dumb idea to bet against the convergence of personal digital accessories. If Steve Jobs really thinks people are going to buy two devices when one will do, his calculated risk is not calculating enough.
There are a lot of people who say they only want a phone that only does phone stuff. But those phones are losing ground to cell phones that are as powerful as the first Apollo onboard computers. You simply won't be able to buy a cell phone that doesn't come with some level of multimedia support. The top of the line phones will feature full-blown MP3 players (duly locked down with DRM) whether or not Apple wants to jump into the fray. The bottom of the line phones will not be as feature rich, but they will have cameras and good screens, not to mention moderately performing audio.
So you can carry one device that plays your music well, acts as a cellular phone, and can be your email address away from the computer. Or you can have two devices clipped to your belt.
Minimalism in form with maximalism in functionality is the new black. Sleek and cool. Not clunky and lame.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
While i do agree with Apple's statement that a too good iTunes Phone would cut into their iPod profits, why even bother at all? The cell market is very hard to get into, and the way Apple is going it could churn out small incremental updates for a long time. It's best to bet on a videoPod than on yet more convergence of devices.
Ah well, i better find my roll of doublesided tape, i got work to do.
Will wank off Linus Torvalds for fame.
The Rokr is a 2 year old phone, that has been software updated with AAC abilities. That's it.
No This s more about Apple's push on the Phone carriers to allow more than themselves to sell services for phones.
Look at the sudden resistance Apple is getting from Sony and Warner in Japan and Australia. The RIAA members got caught off guard when Itunes Music store actually started to make a profit. Napster, and the others were nothing but a joke. Itunes rolled in and cleaned everybody's clock. over $600 million in sales in 2 years.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Apple's strategy here is to sell a program and a service to Motorola. It's not Apple's hardware, guys. The ROKR is not an Apple product.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Hasn't the market shown time and again that a hobbled version of a product will quickly be beaten out by an unhobbled one? In the short term this might keep iPod sales up, but in the long run somebody else will offer a full function cell with mp3 capability (and yes, I avoided the typical, "In the long run.... We're all dead" statement).
I've never been a huge fan of Apple but I have to admit that the iPod has been a great success for them. Sad to see them repeating the history of their computers: establish a great product and cult following and then piss off your customers by limiting their growth options. They took enough body shots from Microsoft over the last 15 years that I would have hoped they learned their lesson.
Even the brightest minds make mistakes. It's about time to suck it up, instead of touting it as a "clever tactical move".
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
No,
There is no money lost. The hardware is not apple's but the software is. Where is the downside on that?
The fact that it's ugly, small, and brain dead is motorola's fault. It's not an Apple product. I suspect that Apple has a much different draft of what that device is supposed to look like, and we will see it in a bit. They don't have a lot of exerience engineering mobile communications hardware. I'm pretty sure that a phone done correctly will be worth it's while. Make no mistake - the iPod phone will be a product of Apple's, which is why Motorola was left out to dry.
I currently have the RAZR admittedly not a great phone but I was comparing the the upper flip part of the fone with the nano and both are about the same thickness and cover the same area (RAZR's flip top is wider but shorter). My point? If they can fit something to the same profile (nano) as half the RAZR i'm sure they could integrate a decent phone in the same sized package? Imagine a flip with the top being like an ipod nano and the bottom being the numeric keypad? Sounds pretty cool to me.
Also along the line of convergence most new subcompact digital camera's do a decent job of capturing 30 fps video (MJPEG / MPEG etc). Yes they dont compare with a video camera but the convenience alone is worth it. Give it another generation or two and I dont see most people (casual video makers) caring enough to buy two separate devices, this will eventually happen with cell phones as well.
" You should have your car radio repossed..."
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I can replace my car radio and upgrade it independently from my car. It's a great example of how it's a device that does one thing, and it can be upgraded at my leisure.
--- witty signature
Reading too far into what is simply a bad product design. It's like people can't come to term with the fact that Apple was involved with a product that suffers from usability issues.
------ Tim O'Brien
Once WI-FI or some other wireless networking technology, I bet Apple will release an iPod that does VOIP. But Apple can't do that now. The only way to get into the mobile phone market right now is to partner with providers who aren't willing to launch the sorts of services that would make an Apple phone an Apple phone. Consequently, Apple is now trying to merely put its name out in the mobile arena. It is essentially creating iTunes for providers to integrate into their non-Apple phones. This avoids stepping on the providers toes. But this is also a temporary step. Ubiquitous wireless will eliminate the need of Apple to partner with the mobile providers.
Point taken. But a computer has always been a multi-purpose device, whereas a phone or a stereo has always been a standalone appliance. I don't think mixing a phone and a stereo together is all that great, mostly because I would rather get something like the iRiver, which supports Ogg and video, and use it without depleting the battery on my phone which gets used up fast enough as it is.
It is kind of like Mozilla Suite vs. Mozilla Firefox. Some people like the entire suite because they want to use the addressbook, calendar, email, composer, browser, chat, kitchen sink all at once in one giant application. I, and a lot of people however, prefer to use just the browser because it is excellent. I don't chat that much, so I don't want an irc client super-integrated into my web browser.
Could this be a lead in to apple in the cell phone market? Or at least a partnership in that area?
If they just licensed software that could greatly cut into their profit margins and their control over the style which is one of the things that makes them so popular.
I'll say it again, the future is in some sort of hybrid between a PDA, GSM/GPRS telephone and an iPod like media player. These gizmos will probably come in several sizes like the Blackberry phones do to cater to the minnmalists as well as those who don't mind talking into a brick sized PDA. If Apple moves into the mobile phone market they will (judging from paste experience with the way they and the iPod caught the music industry with its pants down) really shake that market up which is not a bad thing since innovation in mobile phone design has stagnated in the last few years (with some notable exceptions though). Apple already has iTunes/iPod, they are really good at man/nachine interface design and they have the development muscle to write a decent mini OS for these devices and most of all they are not afraid of going into a new market and doing everything nobody else is thinks won't work.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Well, I'm in the minority with you. I'd rather have a full fledged PDA (rather than a cell phone with an organizer) and a good cell phone. And then have them talk to each other. Let the PDA do it's thing, like run a web browser and then let the phone give me a high speed connection and let them talk via bluetooth.
It's like the Unix philosophy. Each program does one thing and does it well. And it communicates well with other programs.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Apparently we have fallen on the bad side of moderation here. Sorry to drag you down.
I appreciate your argument, but I just don't see that as the way things are going. Phones are becoming the central device in personal accessories. They contain the key technology that has driven almost all new tech in the last 5 years: communication. Now, you are able to talk to your friends anywhere you go, send them an email from wherever you are, or take a picture and let them see what you are seeing (albeit in VGA and through a cheap lens). These are things people didn't even realize they wanted to do until the technology became available. If operators lower the cost of packets, such services will become even more popular.
People already want to take their music with them. They have since Sony brought out the Walkman years ago. The features necessary to playback music are pretty light, comparatively. It's a matter of increasing the audio out abilities of the phone (I'm simplifying, of course), and you've got yourself a media-playing phone. These already exist in some markets, and I don't see the momentum stopping.
The primary thing holding back this particular convergence is lack of storage, but as we saw earlier Flash memory is becoming more abundant than ever. Removable memory is also getting very large, so carrying around your media isn't going to be a hassle.
I also see phones becoming cheaper (price per feature) and the cost of a cellphone/media player is going to be a better value than two separate devices. It's going to come, and I don't think that staggered technology improvements are going to hold back the convergence products.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
The article states "...Their partnership with Motorola for the ROKR could be for the simple reason that they want to understand what they are getting into before actually getting into it full time..."
I fail to see how the ROKR will help Apple understand "what they are getting". Apple would never ship anything remotely similar to the ROKR. I can imagine Steve Jobs being disgusted with the ROKR and every other cell phone on the market right now (with the exception, perhaps, of the SideKick).
By all accounts, the ROKR is a mediocre product at best, with a typical cellphone user interace. It will most likely fail in the market.
Here's another theory: Steve Jobs holds grudges. There has been a tension between Motorola and Jobs ever since he killed the clones. Motorola was left with millions of dollars of unsold inventory and probably as much R&D costs. Shortly after Jobs killed the clones, Motorola got rid of all Macs from their corporate campus in Austin and began switching their PPC strategy from Desktop/Server towards imbedded. So now Jobs is sucker punching Motorola by convincing them to spend millions (again) on a product that's bound to fail. I wouldn't be surprised to see Jobs yank the iTunes rights away from Motorola in a few months.
-J
So why not the same with portable devices? Let me put it this way: Integration should *not* be about building a single box that has everything, physically. It should be about plug-and-play interoperability and open standards.
So how about this: Instead of a big, bulky cellphone + PDA + MP3 player + camera + .... + ... I'd like to have:
- An iPod that can serve as a Bluetooth headset. It has a screen and a rudimentary keyboard (sufficient for most things, such as calling someone from my addressbook or answering a call), and audio I/O.
- A Bluetooth headset. Much smaller than an iPod, but provides the basic functionality I need to receive and make calls.
- A PDA with Bluetooth. It doesn't have a modem or access to a wireless network, but has everything else.
- A slim digital camera, which can take photos and videos well. However, if I want to send an MMS (the main "excuse" for VGA cameras in cellphones), it would be nice if I could just send it via Bluetooth to my cellphone.
Wait! I actually have all these things already. So why can't my cellphone be a screen-less, keyboard-less, matchbox-sized device (basically, battery + Bluetooth tranceiver + GSM tranceiver) that I can drop in my backpocket when I want connectivity with the outside world?Actually, the thing that is missing is interoperability! I can already have this modularity, but getting one device to see the other is a pain. Doing things like getting one device (say the iPod) to see the addressbook in another device (say, the small tranceiver box) is next to impossible.
An article in the Economist recently pointed out that integration for non-portable home entertainment devices is currently a failure because getting things to talk to each other is too complicated: typical consumers do not buy "service offerings" (e.g., system for distributed video, with terminals and servers) but rather buy individual devices on impulse, which they can just plug in and forget. That is why DVD players, for example, caught on: you buy the thing, plug it in and it works.
What we need is the same for digital devices, whether portable or not. The right way to integration is not to build a single box that is a TV + DVD player + computer + DVR + telephone + game console + web terminal + ... + ... (doesn't that sound ridiculous?). What is needed are open protocols that will make the interoperability that is possible with a TV, VCR and DVD also possible on a grander scale. Both for portable and non-portable devices. Just my 2c...
I get what you are trying to say but I beleive you are approaching this from a flawed position.
You seem to be assuming that convergence of differing devices will always result in a poor quality, flawed product, full of compromises.
Whilst I agree that this is the case for early generation converged devices, I do not accept that this situation will persist, especially with the level of R&D that Sony Ericcson, Nokia and Motorola are putting into this area.
Just look at where Nokia have come in the two short years since they released the 6600 (Symbian 60, MP3, SD Card, VGA Camera), now they have the N91 (3.5mm Jack, Symbian, 4GB HD, 2MP Camera).
Converged devices are evolving past the point of a flawed second rate product and will start to reach converged excellence within the next 12-24 months.
I can predict now that the N91 will be hugely successful, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Nokia or Sony offer a competing service to ITunes and I'd be even less surprised if we have a head on Battle between Apple/Motorola, Nokia/Partnerx and Sony for online music delivery via converged devices within a couple of Christmas's (ending ITunes dominance).
Part of the problem is that hardware designers are approaching the problem from the wrong angle. Instead of thinking in terms of "PDA", "phone", "music player", etc. they should think more abstractly, in terms of "I/O", "communications", "storage" etc.
I've got a PDA, cellphone, and iPod. Each of them has a screen and CPU. Why is that? It's completely wasteful! I don't want a PDA with its own processor and memory and whatnot; I just want a screen that I can write on, like an electronic notepad. I don't want a phone; I just want a tranceiver. I don't want an iPod; I just want a storage device.
Wouldn't it be much better for the (pda-like) screen device to be an interface for the "phone" and "iPod"? Wouldn't it be nice for the cellular tranceiver to be only the size of a USB key and get awesome battery life, because it wouldn't need that bulky and power-hungery screen and keyboard? Wouldn't it be nice to have that 20GB of space available to the general-purpose computer instead of just for music?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"In my history of owning devices that do multiple things, it is always the case that they do each poorly. It is less than the sum of the parts."
Duh. Seriously, duh. The reason the extra stuff in the cell phone is interesting is that not everybody has all their fancy doodads at every given moment. A cell phone typically goes with people EVERYWHERE, but it's difficult to imagine anybody walking around with a cell phone, Game Boy, iPod, digital camera, PDA, and GPS.
You're sitting here saying "It does everything poorly" and I'm sitting here thinking "It does it less poorly than nothing at all." I've got some pictures of my nephew acting silly when we went out to dinner. I have a nice digital camera, but I wouldn't have gotten those photos if my phone didn't have a camera. Why? Because I'm not lugging that thing around everywhere I go. Okay, they're 640 by 480 and a little blurry, they're still amusing photos.
Of-freaking-course they're not going to be as good as a much more expensive dedicated device. It's like saying "I don't want a Game Boy because it's nowhere near a PS2."
"Derp de derp."
http://www.applematters.com/index.php/section/comm ents/538/
...what can be explained by stupidity.
The ROKR is stupid, that's all. I once worked in a Fortune 500 company which did stupid stuff. Lots of it. All the time.
From the outside, journalists and fans were simply unwilling to accept the simple explanation and kept concocting explanations of how these moves could be the result of some brilliant strategy.
And, of course, inside the company, stuff would happen and people would say, Wow! That was boneheaded... what are we going to say?
And wordsmiths and spin doctors would get busy with plausible-sounding explanations that "studies show that our business customers want" some dumb thing that nobody in their right mind would ever want and nobody ever bought.
The ROKR is just stupid, that's all. Like IBM's 4" floppy or Microsoft Bob or New Coke. Someone had a bad idea and internal politicians, for whatever reasons, deadline pressure or ego or what, mutually convinced themselves that it was a good idea.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Well, bye for now. I'm off to Velcro my iPod Mini to the back of my cell phone.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I think you are in the minority. Either that or you have alot of pockets and enjoy juggling multiple AC chargers in a feeble attempt to keep all your devices charged and ready should you want to use them. I for one CAN'T WAIT for a decent music phone/camera/PDA. So far the best I have seen is only available in the UK: http://shop.orange.co.uk/shop/show/handset/orange_ spv_c550/detail/pay_monthly
Dedicated music player buttons! And, they even offer a full-track over-the-air download service. When will stuff like this hit the States?
The best one available in the US that I've seen is the AudioVox 5600, which has been around for awhile. Alas the desktop side of the equation in weak, relying on off-the-shelf Microsoft applications, rather than well-designed, easy to use, applications targeted to the mobile phone/music player user.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Judging by the number of times people on /. said something wouldn't work or would not find a market and the opposite happening, shows that trying to analyse the market based on your own personal preferences just does not work. Remember what was said about the iPod shuffle and the iPod mini?
Cell phone companies are using MP3 phones as the next feature to get people to upgrade. In Asia people love gadget phones. North America is really a back water, and even in the stone age, when it comes to mobile phones - we don't have the selection and we don't even necessarily have the latest phones. I am not sure whether that is due to the customers or because of the fragmented networks (most countries are 100% GSM).
At the same time Motorola still hasn't quite got it when it comes to design. The still act like an electronics company, with little to no design sense. It is probably for reasons such as these why Ericsson teamed up with Sony.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
he wants to project phones as an extension but not a replacement of a portable music player
That just doesn't seem like a good plan. 5 years ago, people were juggling 2 seperate devices (a pda and cell phone), but the market share of non-cellphone type PDAs are dwindleing rather quickly.
With battery life, LCD screen density, and processor power increasing, technology currently allows for all 3 devices to happily occupy the same small space for a lower overall price.
Havoc Video
Absolute fluff? Don't you mean intuitive and simple? The whole POINT of the ipod interface is that it doesn't have a lot of buttons and it's very natural to use. Would you prefer maybe clicking up or down on the wheel a bunch of times to select each number in a combination? A combination lock is the simplest and most logical way to use the interface of the ipod to implement a locking mechanism.