How Big Will the iPhone Become?

palewook writes "Combine the best elements of an iPod with a BlackBerry's addictive usefulness, and you may just get Apple's Next Big Thing. Around 2009, when the lower cost version of iPhone appears, Business Week believes the yearly market for iPhones could be over 10 billion dollars a year. Its an interesting prediction; if those numbers come to pass, iPhone could become a bigger source of revenue than the traditional iPod. 'The answer may not come until 2009. By then, Apple should have begun creating lower-cost iPhone variants to reach consumers scared off by the introductory $499 price. It also will probably have moved into overseas markets and cut deals with more carriers to utilize higher-speed wireless networks. So while most analysts look for Apple to sell around 3 million units this year and 10 to 12 million in 2008, many figure that 20 million will move in 2009.'"

Comments

Re:Big enough for Mum to use?

[powerlord]

As an aside, if you want a "Big Button Phone" for Mom/Grandma, look into the jitterbug.

Their bullet points are:

• Live, 24-hour operators provide personal service
  
• Dialing is easy with large, backlit buttons
  
• A soft ear cushion lets you hear every word
  
• Affordable rate plans from just $10 a month
  

Managing the phone number list is via the operator by talking to them or sending them an email or fax (or manage it yourself online soon).
They even have a "simple" phone where you just have the list of numbers, no dial buttons.

Its only available in the U.S. right now, but its a great idea for a service, and I believe Samsung makes the phones.

If so it will buck the market trends.

[supersnail]

This year more than half of Nokia's revenues come from sub 50 Euro phones.

And this percentage is increasing.

I personally can see why. I want a phone to be a phone nothing more nothing less.

I've has a treo [great palm pilot - lousy phone) and was bought a p800 (lousy PDA, lousy phone).

I now have a Nokia 5nnn thingy with the bouncy rubber case which comes with a camera I
have never used, an FM radio I have never used, a compass! which I have used and some other
bells and whistles but it works very well as a phone.

I will spend even less money the next time I buy one and get more of what I really
want from the thing -- simple user interface and long battery life.

haptic feedback, tactile response from touchscreen

[Gary W. Longsine]

the iphone has one potential dealbreaker for me and that is the lack of buttons.

This article nicely describes a mechanism for tricking the brain with smart vibrations of the cell phone, providing a sense of tactile response on touch screens which might solve the issue with lack of tactile response for many touch screen use cases: How it works: Touch Screen Cell

Re:Don't see the allure..

[DragonWriter]

Please get a bluetooth headset and a phone with good voice dialing if and only if you must talk on the phone while driving.

Doesn't really make a difference. The source of danger from using a phone while driving is far more from tunnel vision that accompanies the conversation than anything else; while it is rather dangerous to talk on the phone while driving, its not substantially more dangerous to do so without a hands-free phone. Though, in many jurisdictions, it is illegal.

Re:business users

[EccentricAnomaly]

Last I checked the thing had no mechanism for ActiveSync, so no real-time synchronization with email, calendars, contacts. In my phone I don't have Outlook contacts and regular contacts. you've been able to check one? :) iSync already synchronizes my contacts on my Razr, I see no reason why it wouldn't work with an iPhone, IMAP will take care of email sync. Calendaring is the only thing left... but with the iCal icon in all of the iphone pictures, I gotta think they have something for that too.

I have one place, if I add it to my contacts in Outlook it will appear on my phone almost instantly depending on the time of the day. Alternatively if I add a contact while I'm out in the field it will automatically be in Outlook where it is safely backed up. iSync does this if you just bring your phone into bluetooth range.

Storage on the smart-phones is simple as well, a simple SD card and you can have a good chunk of music, or lots of reference material, or in my case, a password database. SD cards are nice... but Apple could have a different solution for this with wifi.

Emailing while out in the field has become a big app too, from what I'm seeing the iPhone won't hold up real well to texting. Besides the fact that the screen would get dirty I don't know how it would stand up to regular cell phone abuse. How many times have I dropped my Treo? Many, and it's still fine, the phone isn't as pretty as it once was but it's still fully functional. this should be an issue for consumers more than business... most business people aren't out in the field, just in meeting all day. The iphone interface should work fine in a meeting... and be less conspicuous than a laptop.

Lastly, and the biggest reason why the iPhone is not for business. As systems administrator I can't remotely manage and secure the phones for my organization. If a Treo is lost and there are important sensitive documents on the phone I can simply erase everything on it so that any person they may find it on a park bench somewhere will not see that sensitive information. I can do this all wireless and in real-time.

There's no way to know about this until after the iphone is out... and with running OS X, Apple could concievably allow you to ssh into an iPhone or maybe even run remote desktop.... though I doubt they've had time to get such features ready for launch. But I see no reason why they couldn't in a year or so. I also bet the iphone can lock its data from the casual snoop like an ipod can already.

Considering OS X for the desktop still lacks these advanced management, monitoring, and security tools I don't think the phone is going to get it anytime soon. I will admit, the day that Apple does close this whole I imagine their market share will rise much faster. Combine that with binary compatibility with Windows and Apple would have all it needs to become dominant. I don't see it happening though, Apple has always seemed content to be a smaller player in the field of business.

Did you write the above just to troll? OS X Server has had this sort of stuff for years... plus you can easily get ports of most of the Linux utilities as well. I thought this sort of stuff would be common knowledge by now. OS X is a Unix... the shared libraries are weird, but you can still port all of the wonderful FOSS stuff over.

And "Apple" and Windows are not binary compatible, you can just dual boot Windows and OS X on a mac now.

p.s. I'm not a fanboi, just trying to understand the "iPhone bad for business" meme, 'cuz everyone I work with wants to get one for business... but we're kinda unique in not using MS Office much and using mostly Linux stuff instead.