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Inside Apple's iPhone
DECS writes "Despite CNET's wild claims, Roughly Drafted is reporting that Apple's market position and recent performance show the company has the ability, capacity, and interest in shaking up the mobile phone industry. Something that service providers, manufacturers, and consumers desperately need."
The truth of it is that style, over quality, is the driving market force for most of Apple's consumers. I'm not saying it's a bad thing (except for admittedly picky people like myself) but it IS a sign that the iMobile won't be a terribly high-powered device. It'll be all form.
/.)
If it's a GSM phone, it'll suffer the same poor audio quality, low data speeds, and structural penetration issues that all 900mHz phones suffer from. If it's a CDMA phone it'll HAVE to be sold through Verizon or Sprint directly, since those carriers' networks are locked on their end, no the phone's. If it's sold "unbranded" you'll lose half the market right away, especially the high-end users, the vast majority of which are on Verizon or Sprint, for the data options.
The RAZR is the perfect example of Style over Substance in the cellphone market. By all accounts, it's a terrible phone. It's wider than it should be, it has lousy battery life, it's fragile, has a terrible OS, delivers little to no advanced features, and cost (at launch) more than most PDA phones. But it was chique, and so it sold in droves. Remember when it was so absurdly cool to own an iPod? Now your grandmother's cat's litterbox has a dock, and came with a free nano.
Apple DOES sell form. When was the last time you heard anyone in an Apple store say "I want that one because it can do 1.4billion more calculations per second than the one over there in black" No, the prevailing sentiment is: It's cute. That's what sells Apple, and pretty much all that sells Apple to the VAST MAJORITY of their users. It isn't the software library, it isn't the 10 day return policy, it isn't "tested and reliable" hardware. That is the deciding factor for less than 1% of their customers (though admittedly those who should loudest and post most frequently on
I've wandered a bit into corporate culture and away from the impending iMobile. I apologize. But for the iMobile to reach the maximum number of consumers, it won't be a powerful product. It will flash Apple's minimalist design and carry a premium price point, because you're not just buying a cellphone, you're buying "cool".
Ultimately they're in the same boat as Google is now: Trying to "mandate cool" rather than putting out good products and letting people decide that they're cool. And that's a ship that sinks fast.