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Dvorak to Apple - Stop The iPhone
eldavojohn writes "John Dvorak is advising Apple to cease all efforts on the iPhone, citing the mobile handset business as a 'buzz saw waiting to chop up newbies.' With Apple's image as a 'hot company that can do no wrong' on the line, Dvorak warns that the extremely fad-prone marketplace for cell phones will quickly turn the 'hot' iPhone passe'. Unless the company has several new models in the pipeline to release after the original offering, he says, they're likely to fail. 'If it's smart it will call the iPhone a "reference design" and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else's marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures.'"
I think the biggest stumbling block for the iPhone is going to be the fact that it's not a 3G phone at a time when the trend is going toward 3G phones. Cingular is even giving 3G phones away free, now...
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
The phone has GPS. The GPS continually updates every minute and stores in cache on phone. Every so many hours, its uploaded to your home account so you can review where you were the days before. It also has a 1 touch blog. You can then record voice/text/pictures/video to your site and it will be formatted nicely. You can let family members or friends view this website. It would be a living diary for you, and would take no effort. Just 1 button and all the complex web work is done automatically. Hey and if someone wants to implement this, maybe you can hire me :)
God spoke to me.
The cell phone market is filled with phones that are difficult to use, unstable, and generally crap.
I have a Motorola Q and it SUCKS. Sure, it hooks up to exchange, and it is nice and small, but battery life sucks, voice recognition sucks, and it crashes more than Eddie Griffin driving an Enzo.
I can't tell you how many times I've looked at phone interfaces from LG, Samsung, Motorola and Nokia and thought the designers were all on crack.
Apple NEEDS to show the world how to make a phone. God help us if they don't.
-ted
Apple may have lucked out with the iPod - let's face it, any new product launch is a gamble, especially into a product for which you have no previous background.
I have to think though that trying to break into the already pretty mature cel phone market is an entirely different thing.
The market for iPods was largely wide open - most people who bought were moving over from CD or cassette players, and represented a pretty much untapped population.
The iPhone though will have to convince existing cel phone owners to change hardware, and in some case change service providers. That's a much tougher sell, especially when you're charging up front for a phone when most providers offer a phone for "free."
If I were marketing this thing I'd sell it as an upgrade for existing iPod owners, a newer better iPod that just happens to also include a phone.
Three Squirrels
Ya know, like how the iPod was going to destroy the prestine image of Apple back in 2001? What a fucking idiot this guy always seems to be. Sure the iPhone isn't going to break any records out of the gate, but its something to grow on. It's the way things have to work: the first adopters are always going to be techies, who want the most features possible... this subsidizes the marketing of lower-end models which target the mainstream consumer. It's a good business strategy when trying to bring out a new type of gadget.
The Zune failed because it tried to copy something that was already on the market, but started with the high end. The opposite would have been better, here, they should have started with really low-end models and worked their way up, because Microsoft wasn't really aiming to establish a new kind of device. The iPhone, on the other hand, is really pushing to try and bring a fairly unique kind of device into the mainstream market place, so they have to start at the top.
There's a reason Dvorak never gets hired for consulting work, he has no idea what goes into a good business strategy. I don't know why we even post his fluff on here any more. I say slashdot just ignore him from now on, and he'll eventually go away.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Having read the article (omg, ban him from slashdot!), I will give Dvorak this: the cell phone market is nothing like the mp3 market that Apple helped to create. The situations are very different, so you can't expect a success like the ipod. Of course, you almost never get successes like the ipod in business, so that really isn't saying much.
-Jeff
P.S. The rest of what he said regarding fashion, etc, I have no idea. Personally I think price tag, batteries, memory, calling plan, and the 3G aspect will tell the tale more than fashion. So JD and I may come to the same conclusion, but from completely different logic chains.
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
Excerpts:
While a 2% share of the entire world's PCs wouldn't suggest much of a reason to target Macs for software development, having 8% of the active US installed base certainly does.
Since more than half of all PCs are used in business, Apple owns an even larger portion of the consumer market's installed base, where Apple choses to compete. Pulling out business PCs, Apple's share of the consumer PC installed base is above 15%, which correlates with the software available for the Mac.
In education, Apple has a 23% share of all new sales in the US, and around 15% in Europe. (Walk around a college campus and tell me how many Macs you see. Now realize that Macs are probably going to be their platform of choice going forward.)
NPD just reported figures that report Apple took 10% of January's billion dollar laptop sales in the retail channels it monitors; recall that NPD only reports on big box retailers, not Apple Stores or any online sales.
In the final quarter of 2007, Apple earned $7.1 billion in revenue, compared to Microsoft's $12.5 billion in total revenue. Yes, that's right, Apple brought in more than half as much money as Microsoft, despite Windows owning 98% of the PC market.
Even stripping Apple of its iPod revenues, which PC pundits love to do, the company still earned $4.4 billion on its Macintosh business, over a third as much Microsoft brought in from its entire Windows, Office, and server operations combined. Apple's 2% of the PC market doesn't seem so small anymore.
Of course, Microsoft actually lost a lot of money on all of its consumer electronics products, so looking at profits, Apple earned $1 billion compared to Microsoft's total $3.4 billion in profit.
Yeah, Apple's a non-payer alright...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I have to concur with you. The cell phone market has reached a lull in the U.S. in terms of pushing forward with new ideas. I don't see EVDO or EDGE as new ideas, just an extension of an existing idea. The same can be said of almost all of the features of the iPhone itself. (Not withstanding the use of OS-X on an embedded platform: where's my Apple iTablet?)
The biggest thing Jobs and Co. is revolutionizing with the iPhone isn't the phone itself, it is how the consumer purchases services from the service provider. If we recall, Verizon Wireless was offered exclusive rights to sell the iPhone but turn the offer down when Apple required that the iPhone purchaser could not be bound by a contract and that no promotional offers tied to a contract were allowed. VZW, using the age-old telco mantra of "rest of your contract and recurring monthly revenues (RMR) generated by locking in customers" model, was reluctant to take on a new business model. Now that Verizon's largest competitor, AT&T, has taken on the mantle of contractless RMR, there is a potential that the US cell phone market will finally be liberated from the US cell phone service contract.
Separating the sale of a cell phone from the service contract in the US is nothing short of revolutionary: a war VZW has been reluctant to fight and one they will ultimately lose to AT&T
True, true. I'll also toss this little tidbit in:
Even if it is left by the wayside as far as phones go, remember it is also a widescreen iPod. A widescreen, touchscreen iPod. If the phone flops as a phone, just pull the phone features from the firmware and hardware, add storage capacity, and it's still a widescreen iPod. No need to change the form factor.
In a way, by making it an iPod as well as a phone, Apple has hedged its bet regarding success in the cellular phone market.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
He's wrong on occasion - but that doesn't mean he's ALWAYS wrong. I happen to agree with him here, although I don't think that it will ruin Apple or anything. I think they will release the iPhone, it will be a big seller for a little while and a status symbol (kinda like the $600 razr phone, which is now $50 or free with a plan.) But, the margins are very slim, the phone is kinda big and fragile in comparison to a flip-phone (big screen, like the PSP.. with a very shiny surface) and expensive as all hell. In the long term, I don't see Apple producing too many phones.
..xyz." Touch screen on a portable phone is novel, but not necessary in any way. The device is still locked down to all hell.
To top it all off, they aren't really introducing anything new that would be a "even if they fail, at least they brought us
I wish them luck, and I think they're going to need it.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
man I hate the modern mobile phones.
I would like to have a phone with large buttons, these can be either raised or sunken buttons, but I want to feel them, I want tactile response, a 'click' sort of feeling. I want to be able to push them without looking, so I want a large enough phone to put these large enough buttons. I want the phone to be made of metal, something that needs a screwdriver to be taken appart, I want it to be waterproof. Better yet it should be able to float, but that's asking too much for something made of metal. In any case I want to be able to drop the f.cking thing into a bucket full of soap water, pull it out after 3 hours and still be able to use it without any problems. I want this phone to have a nice screw on clip, which won't break off. I want this phone to have a power socket, that doesn't break after 3 weeks of use. Not like those f.cking Motorolla power sockets that are completely useless garbage. I want a power socket that can be closed (waterproof, remember?) and the kind that doesn't break even if the power cord is shoved in sideways (well, if there is an attempt, anyway.) I want the battery to last for a month (too much to ask,) ok, if it lasts for 5 days without recharging that would already be a miracle. I want the reception on this phone to be exceptional. I don't want this phone to do anything fancy. I don't want a camera or an mp3 player. However an AM radio would be awesomely appreciated. Not the useless FM radio, but the useful AM, that's where all the best talk shows are in Toronto. I don't want any musical cacophony as a ring tone, I don't care, but a single purpose rotary volume control would be freaking awesome, with a single purpose VERY HARD TO PUSH, BUT A LARGE button to switch from Loud to Soft to Vibrate and back.
I do not mind paying up to $300 for a phone like that. If it has an AM radio, 350. If it has a built in GPS receiver then 500.
No cameras, no mp3s, no fancy programming except for very basic features. I want a freaking phone that works and cannot be easily destroyed. It has to be a quad band so I can take it with me anywhere, and it has to have a detachable SIM card (f.ck you, Telus.)
I can't get anything like this, I may just build my own.
You can't handle the truth.
I think the iPhone has potential. As a device, it's extremely well-designed. The multitouch interface is certainly something new and could redefine the way people interact with mobile devices. They've clearly put a lot of top-of-the-line hardware into it; the demo Jobs gave of things like Cover Flow on the iTunes portion of it is proof enough of that, and every smartphone -- or product that pretends to be a smartphone, anyway -- should have 802.11 these days.
:)
As a product, ehhhh. Who are they selling to? Certainly not Joe Consumer -- who has $499 to throw away on a 4GB iPod, even if it also happens to be a cellphone and web browser? For $499, I want a device that matches up to what the iPhone ACTUALLY is -- a handheld OS X device. But no, Apple had to go and lock the machine down and give a bunch of phony excuses for it, when all it really comes down to is "Jobs wants to be emperor of 'his' product." So all of the potential that it had as a handheld OS X machine -- the potential that they actually touted with all of the talk about it "running OS X" and "having Cocoa" -- will go to waste. No GNU tools. No open-source software. Bah.
OK, maybe we agree more than disagree.
+++ATH0
I got suckered with the RAZR, and you're dead right - it sucks. It's worse than any phone I've owned. But I'm saving my money for an iphone for that very reason. Yes, you heard me right - I'm saving my money for an iphone because the RAZR and every other cell phone I've had since the nokia something-circa-1998 has sucked big time.
The iphone was built by people that think current cell phones suck in both design and function (if I remember it right, Jobs himself started this crusade for a usable cell phone after some lousy offering with motorola in '05?). Apple built the iphone without the input of the cell phone companies, and as I understand it, in some cases, in spite of them - verizon dumped it because apple wouldn't use verizon's web browser (or some such quibble) - that really had nothing to do with the device itself. Verizon and every other phone company wanted to tack their own little piece of crapware to the device, and apple said no. Oh thank GOD.
APPLE built a *phone* from the hardware to the software, without the 'help' or input from the very same companies that have flooded the market with cool LOOKING garbage like the RAZR. I've never owned a mac, but from what I understand they're pretty good at the whole 'designed' for people thing. I own an ipod (hate itunes, but love the device), and I'm happy to bet $600 that I'll be using an iphone for the next 5 years.
Of course... if it sucks too, I'm just going back to screaming really loud. Or maybe just suck it up and get a land line.
In any event, I think he's wrong on all counts simply because the iPhone doesn't represent a dead end for Apple even if the iPhone product itself fails. Eventually, Apple will want advanced touchscreen products, MacOS X running on very small low-powered systems, cellular internet access, and so forth and so on built into its products. iPhone may not be The Killer Product, but each of the technologies in it is core to Apple and important in the long term.
Strategically, the iPhone represents:
* Gee doesn't shipping the first consumer digital cameras count as a new product Mr. Dvorak?
I doubt that. I don't think that the iPhone is a Newton. New revisions of the iPhone will certainly come out, and I expect to see one with a 60 GB hard drive sometime in the near future. Currently, it competes with a nano in terms of storage, and any other cell phone around for ease of use.
It DOES bring new stuff to the table. It has the ipod brand for one, second, it changes how the phone itself works to make it easy. Finally, it, like the razr and the ipod will be the sexy thing to have. I got a Razr through work, and even though it is apparently "no longer" the sexy phone, I still get comments about it "ooh! A razr!".
As a Apple brings in new models, this thing will be hotter than the iPod. I have little doubt of that. Because it will have all the sexiness of the ipod, and the razr, and actually be easy to use. My Razr is a POS for ease of use. IMO, it BLOWS from an interface perspective. From what I have seen of the iPhone, it is going to be a knockout blow. And no, I am no apple fanboi.
Apple has thought this through, and done this right, and they are going to sell tons of these things.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
To top it all off, they aren't really introducing anything new that would be a "even if they fail, at least they brought us ..xyz." Touch screen on a portable phone is novel, but not necessary in any way.
The interface is novel as all hell. Have you seen it in operation? Compared to ordinary cell phones, it's the Second Coming. In particular, the browser experience is quite novel. I have a Nokia 770, and while browsing is adequate, the zoom in/out features are definitely not as good as the iPhone. Before I saw the iPhone, I thought the technique was decent, but as soon as I saw the multitouch-based zoom, I knew that it was The Right Way (TM).
The other novel (and yet not) feature is: no partitioned storage! I currently have a cell with 128 MB of storage, but only 150 texts allowed! Only 32MB of pictures via the built-in phone! What kind of stupidity is that? The iPhone brings computer-like storage management. Thank God.
And this is just basic phone stuff. I won't even go into the other novel stuff which people have mentioned (random access voicemail, etc.).
To be honest, I don't think the iPhone can flop, because it just sucks so much less than everything else.
The device is still locked down to all hell.
This would indeed be a serious problem IMO. However, such restrictions are not yet at all clear; phone's not out yet! So I'll reserve judgment until the final verdict is in.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.