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What If Apple Made A Cell Phone And No One Cared?
PreacherTom writes "Prudential Equity Group analyst Jesse Tortora penned a note saying that Apple is readying a music phone — and a separate, combination video and music phone. He expects Apple to introduce the devices in January at Macworld, a conference for Mac enthusiasts where the company typically debuts new products. At least one of the phones will offer Wi-Fi connectivity and both will become available in the March quarter of 2007 ... but will anyone care?"
What would be neat is if the extended features like playing music, using cameras, etc., could all draw their power off of a separate battery than the phone. That way you could use as much of the extra features without worrying about killing the phone itself. Naturally during the "recharge" process both batteries would be rejuvinated.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
That's not how it works.
You (yes you!) are continually paying for phone upgrades, whether you get one or not. Those people who do not upgrade their phone on a regular basis are subsidizing those upgrades for everyone else - the amount that one pays for a service plan is computed, based on the percentage of people who will get phone upgrades, to pay for the subsidization. I'm guessing they guess a little high on that percentage so there's some money left over, and they use it to give out upgrade specials, but it's just a guess.
Regardless, it's not that they're so cheap that the phone company can offer them for free. It's that the phone company buys pallets of them in an unconfigured mode and configures 'em themselves, then handles distribution to their stores themselves, and meanwhile is charging every subscriber on their network for all those phone upgrades. If you don't get a phone upgrade every time you can, then you're just subsidizing someone else's upgrade.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That depends on your definition of "better." For most people, I suspect "better" means "works with iTunes" or "has a large selection of accessories" or "has a simple interface." In this case, the iPod actually is the best DAP.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
...to wit, people spend $300 (and up) on video iPods, people buy third-party, licensed iTunes phones without the ability to play iTunes video content, yes, I think its quite likely that people will care about Apple-made phones with iTunes and, especially, iTunes video capability, particularly if they have the kind of data capacity that video iPods have.
Heck, I'd replace my current SLVR for one in a heartbeat, assuming it was a good phone as well as an iPod: the SLVR is a nice phone, but the storage capacity is really limited.
Exactly what I was thinking. Apple targets the USA aggressively, to the extent that their products often feel like they just don't care about the rest of the world (don't believe me? Check the hold switch on the iPod corded remote; it's upside down everywhere except the USA). The US mobile 'phone market sucks; there is far too much network lock-in for hardware manufacturers to care about it. On the other hand, the USA has a lot of large WiFi deployments, and more are springing up all the time.
If I were in Apple's position, I would release an iPod with 802.11/b/g/n that could download from the music store while mobile and make VoIP calls to iChat (AIM/Jabber) and iPhone users. Maybe offer a service to allow calls to POTS units, but primarily aim it at the IM generation. I suspect there is a huge market consisting of teenagers who can persuade their parents to buy a gadget, but who can't afford calls on a cell-phone as easily.
If it could do some form of mesh networking with ZeroConf person-discovery then this could well be a killer feature (a mesh network over a campus-sized area could work nicely).
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Actually, a good percentage of the Macs sold at my campus computer store are being sold with Windows pre-loaded, at the customer's request. People don't seem to mind paying the additional $120 or so for an OEM copy...
Don't people get tired of writing these and being proven wrong a month later? I guess after the 90s "Apple is dead" FUD didn't work, and all the "iPod killer" FUD articles of the last 24 months didn't have an effect, so now it's time to go after the iPhone?
Where is BusinessWeek's "Zune, yawn" article? Wouldn't that make more sense given Apple's staggering financial success announced this week and their path toward supplanting Gateway as the #3 U.S. computer maker?
"Sufferin' succotash."
The thing that the author just doesn't get is that Apple fans will buy or at least hype anything that Apple releases(I know because I'm one of them). Steve Jobs could shit in a box, Jonathan Ives will shape it into a cube, they will sell several million units and get a ton of attention. Time would have the iShit on the cover and Walt Mossberg will say that it is the ultimate in human excrement.
This isn't like the PC market where Dell == HP == Gateway == Lenovo and you are buying purely on price or half-baked feature x. Apple has a dedicated fanbase with a common respect for clean design and seamless integration and they know that any product coming out of Cupertino will offer that as a base, plus something that is at once totaly obvious, and completely new (or at least implemented in a sane way).
I guarantee that if Apple announces the iPhone at MacWorld 2007, there will be at least half a million people with their credit-cards out before the next slide in Steve's presentation.
Why can't they just make their own network a la MVNO (like Virgin Mobile, for example)? Apple has always been about the entire experience, that's why they make/design both the software and the hardware for every other product they make.
It would only make sense for them to provide the entire experience, by starting their own virtual network.
Zing!
It's good to have more choices for consumers on the market. Every new idea that Apple introduces to the market will inspire others to make more of their own and that will result in a richer marketplace and provide us with more choices.
There weren't as many MP3 players on the market before the iPod. Apple made everyone else step up their game and add new features and reduce their prices.
I'm not going to buy one, but thanks for giving us more choices Apple.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano