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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.'"
How about we wait until they've sold *one* until we predict that they'll sell 20 million 2 years from now.
"while driving and in numerous situations where I don't want to LOOK at the phone"
Please get a bluetooth headset and a phone with good voice dialing if and only if you must talk on the phone while driving.
Heck if the IPhone stops people from using their cell while driving it may save thousands of lives!
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The iPhone doesn't exist in a vacuum. Apple have (arguably) raised the bar on screen quality, usability, features and memory size, and the people who currently have 100% of the mobile phone market won't be ignoring that. The question is how quickly their corporate cultures can switch round to building phones that are not just designed to tick boxes on a features checklist but are actually good at the things they can currently just about do.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
While the big button idea is funny I don't think that the real acceptance test will be peoples Mothers or Grandmothers.
I see the target for the IPhone to be the Treo and Blackberry crowd. I really want to see one and the SDK. I hate AT&T and I am still trying to figure out why Apple went with them. The only thing I can figure out is that Apple made a deal about using AT&Ts pipes if net neutrality goes south.
I am going ready for a new phone in November and the IPhone is tempting if I can do development on it. It could be a great market to get into.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It will be reliability. This isn't an iPod; you're iPod breaks and so you can't listen to music or watch videos, that's a shame. But people are wedded to their mobile phones -- if these things can't stand up to the pounding that a normal mobile phone takes in the course of a day, you're going to see sales tail off pretty damned fast.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Maybe, but the big breakout happens if that's NOT true. Remember, there were lots of MP3 players out there when Apple stomped them. They did so by making a techno-geek device into something everyone _trusted_ they could actually use. And that's what "Apple" means now. That's important, if it is the case that people are not buying smartphones because they are too geeky (or people believe they are), then this could really smoke.
...I don't think the iPhone is going to be big at all.
The ipod was/is huge becuase it was a relatively early entrant in a market that was just on the verge of exploding in size, and it was hugely advertised and hyped, and there wasn't any real competition for at least a couple of years. The tie-in with iTunes helped too.
The mobile phone market is completely different to this. Completely. There is an enormous existing market which has already been through most of its rapid-growth phase. There are huge, competent companies churning out amazingly sophisticated models of all types (just this quarter, the SonyEricsson W880 and the Nokia N95 are great examples), and they are refreshing those models at a furious pace.
The mobile markets differ around the world, but the Western European model essentially removes the purchase price from the end-user. I haven't paid more than $100 US for a new phone in eight years, and I'm a technophile who upgrades every year, ususally to a high-end just-released model.
Apple have no experience at making phones. They make stuff which can be good to use, but that's hard in the phone world. Above all, phones have to be good phones first, then be good ipods, then have other stuff they do well. My SonyEricsson W850 is a very good phone, a great walkman, and also lets me browse the Internet at broadband speeds in a decent way, has good Java games available, a decent-enough camera, a torch, alarm clock and so on. It's very hard to get right the phone bit, and nothign of what I've read about the iPhone tells me it'll be any good at that. It's not 3G which rules it out for many technophiles including myself, too.
Apple might talk about a low-cost verion in 2009, but the others will have cheaper phones that do far more in 2007, let alone 2008 or 2009.
They might be moderately successful in a niche in the USA, (and in the mobile pheon world, the US is a niche), but I cannot see it becoming widely successful elsewhere. I might be wrong - it might have a neat feature that'll make it a must-have - but I'll be very surprised if they do - and the second it's out, the competitors will be throwing together better competing phones.
the key to the success of the iphone will be initial public perception once it's in the wild.
the iphone has one potential dealbreaker for me and that is the lack of buttons. texting outstrips voice by orders of magnitude - for a long time abroad (Europe, for example) and a bit more recently in the US. quick and effective texting on my motorola Q now means i can text without looking at the keys - as tactile response allows me to fly over the keypad. i don't have to wait for visual confirmation of a keystroke to continue texting.
the sidekick was popular with teens a couple of years ago for this very reason. It was one of the first phones to relatively inexpensively offer qwerty and seamless communications packages for texting, email, and IM. it didn't matter that the form factor was less than aesthetically pleasing, it mattered that the phone allowed you to communicate quickly and simply, and it also matter that providers soon offered a prepaid service that allowed teens to get the phone and buy minutes/data.
if this screen is somehow at least as tactile and responsive as keys are on a phone pad - then the iphone will dominate communications because apple understands how to woo consumers. this is clearly not a business device, so they need to dominate the consumer market. teens drive a lot of the consumer market and teens text more than they speak (let me expound: by teens i more aptly mean 13-24 market). at an unsubsidized $500, this might be a little high for this market, so apple might have to come downmarket fast. what's interesting here is that the fashion industry does this with runway lines - so called couture. those items are unrealistic for street wear and ridiculously priced - but that drives interest for the "ready to wear" stuff that shows up at your local department store.
the other issue that is interesting to me is that the phone can be used as a vanity phone. if usability is an issue - then people will want to have one, but have a more functional phone on hand for day to day and keep the iphone around when trolling for the ladies. so even if usability suffers you might see significant sales because it will be the it phone to have, even if for show. working in media, there are plenty of film execs who have blackberries but are totally unable to use them, but have them because this is the accessory a film producer is expected to have. so they carry it around and have an assistant check emails, etc.
-third part software is not an issue to the average user.
-battery life might be an issue to the average user, but it will not prevent him/her from buying the product.
-3g vs 2.5g, etc. this is also not an issue to the average user. they do not care about this. as long as it works - users are familiar with and expect slower bandwidth time on a handheld.
the average user is concerned with the following more than likely:
-does it look hot? will this make me look cooler? (CHECK)
-does it work? (?????) this is where the texting comes in. Your average user might say: "It's cool but texting on it makes me frustrated because i have to get used to doing it a new way" (this is important because at $500 you don't get downmarket uptake by the people most likely not to bristle at the new interface - kids/tweens/teens) - or - "It's too slow to text on this thing."
the ipod function will not get used because it will kill battery life. i don't think the average user wants all/a portion of his music collection on his phone anyway. the audience is simply not that interested in that kind of convergence. it increases complexity and the market doesn't want that.
un burrito me trampeó.
Ok Apple fan boys go ahead and mod me troll.
But without corporations pushing their email to these devices you won't get the blackberry user base, and lets face it most big corporations haven't liked anything else Apple up to this point so why change for this product?
Now the home user? The reason most don't have a smart phone is that they just don't need it. Most of the regular phones on the market already do far more and are alot more complicated than people want them to be. The average person is going to ask why they need to upgrade to this expensive phone when their normal phone does far more than they ever wanted it to do.
So there will be a bunch of apple fans and tech geeks that buy this initially then it's sales will plummet and Apple will can the project.
Ok I'm done burning my karma now.
I hate Verizon for the same reason - locking out phone features which only benefit Verizon. I just got a RAZR V3M and Verizon deliberately disabled the OBEX function (Object Exchange) which was enabled on the V3C. OBEX lets you browse the phone's file system, recover pictures, plant MP3 files as ringtones... But NOOOO!! Verizon turned all that off so they can sell your pictures back to you, sell ringtones etc. Everything the phone can do has been disabled and turned into a paid service. I'm done with any company that starts abusing customers.
Most of the stuff on
Ok Apple fan boys go ahead and mod me troll.
Why do that? Why not mod you up and up and up... to make it easier to find your post later. There is a large difference between being a troll, and being wrong. I'm sure you sincerely believe what you say.
But without corporations pushing their email to these devices you won't get the blackberry user base, and lets face it most big corporations haven't liked anything else Apple up to this point so why change for this product?
On the other hand, what if consumer push is more interesting to more people than business email push? The Yahoo push mail is an interesting option. Does everyone on earth really have more interest in their business email than the personal stuff?
Now the home user? The reason most don't have a smart phone is that they just don't need it. Most of the regular phones on the market already do far more and are alot more complicated than people want them to be.
Sounds like a a great idea then is to take a complicated device and make it much simpler. I'm not sure I know any company that has any experience at that.
The average person is going to ask why they need to upgrade to this expensive phone when their normal phone does far more than they ever wanted it to do.
Does the average person really like the phone they have?
So there will be a bunch of apple fans and tech geeks that buy this initially then it's sales will plummet and Apple will can the project.
Ok I'm done burning my karma now.
You misspelled "credibility". Brave of you to post where we can all read your thoughts in a year.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This story seems to provide a pretty reasonable background on the deal: How Steve Jobs Played Hardball In iPhone Birth: In Deal With Cingular He Called The Shots; Flirting With Verizon . It provides some clues as to the complexity of the negotiations that Apple engaged in. It doesn't cover everything, though.
1. Retail channel
There were many big problems to solve simultaneously, perhaps including one that couldn't be solved any other way, than partnering with at least one carrier: consumers today buy cell phones from wireless providers. That meant that Apple had to get the iPhone into wireless stores to really break into the market with anything other than a hobbyist handset maker niche. AT&T has over 2000 stores in the U.S., apparently. Other large wireless providers are similar in scale of retail presence. Wireless providers have stores in airports, big malls, little malls, downtown areas, inside of other stores like Radio Shack, Costco, etc. Apple couldn't build that kind of retail network in time to sell the iPhone, it needed to get the device into places where people were already looking for phones.
2. Give and Take of Negotiations & Shaking the Industry
I suspect that Apple would have preferred to be able to secure deals with multiple vendors in the U.S. However, the cell phone industry is seriously distorted, globally, not merely in the U.S. The handset makers think that the wireless carrier is the customer, which is the ultimate cause of cell phone suckage. Cell phones are camels designed by committes of people who have never even imagined a desert oasis, let alone been to one. Apple probably had to grant a period of exclusivity to Cingular / AT&T in order to get the rest of the things Apple needed for the iPhone to be an industry shaker -- which it already has been, despite the fact that it won't even be in consumer hands for a few more weeks. And Apple got a whole lot of stuff, some of it unprecedented including changes to the provider's network to support "visual voicemail". Companies like Verizon, even though they may provide good service to their customers, also are wed to the distorted market. They perceive bluetooth as a competitive threat, and cripple it in their phones to lock their customers into their ringtone sales engine and into paying extra to transfer photos from the phone to their computer. Apple's insistance that the iPhone not be hobbled by the carrier led Verizon to say "Thanks, we'll try it our way." But the Djinni is out of the bottle, on June 29. As consumers learn what these devices can really do, they'll be demanding blue tooth sync, 802.11 connection to their PCs, and other iPhone features from Verizon. Verizon will see its subscriber base shrink if they don't provide similar, un-hobbled capability to their customers.
3. HSPDA vs. EVDO
There's another interesting tidbit regarding the 3G network market in the U.S. that might be a factor. AT&T/T-Mobile/MISC GSM Vendors appear to be seriously lagging behind Verizon/Sprint/Alltell, which blanketed the U.S. Market with 2.4 Mbit EVDO data service many months ago. In fact this seems to be "common wisdom" amongst Slashdot / Gizmodo / Engadget geeks. As everyone knows, AT&T and the many other network providers around the globe are betting on the other major 3G network technology, HSPDA. What seems to have been overlooked, in the frustration with the slow pace of 3G rollout from the GSM vendors, is that HSPDA seems on the brink of crushing EVDO in terms of bandwidth. According to that wikipedia page "Current HSDPA deployments now support 1.8 Mbit/s, 3.6 Mbit/s, 7.2 Mbit/s and 14.4 Mbit/s in downlink." One of my gadget geek friends was able to confirm that HSPDA service is available in his
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
1) No synching with Outlook.
2) No synching with enterprise email services.
It's not about ssh, X Windows, or iWork. The current "smart phone" industry is providing people with a big heavy feature they don't presently want -- MS Office on their phone. Yeah, it makes for dramatic commercials where spreadsheets are edited at the last second before a big meeting and a billion dollar merger is saved. In practice, people running billion dollar mergers don't really care what's in the spreadsheet. They don't read them, they have people who have people who read them for them. This feature was added to smart phones by Microsoft because Excel is what they had lying about to sell, and because it makes for dramatic advertisements.
The iPhone is about a balance of features that people really want. Business people would love an iPod in their phone, because they spend a fair bit of time on airplanes, in hotels, in airports, in taxi cabs. They also would love an easy to use map system that could help them find a decent restaurant nearby. The Apple iPhone commercials don't look like they target business users, but they nail squarely what a business user wants from a phone. They want to carry less shit with them. They want to be able to quickly look up something on the internet, or bookmark something they heard about for reference later. They're going to buy an iPhone and their older iPod and Palm Pilot will be in a drawer.
The biggest thing, however, will be ease of use. If the Address book doesn't have some asinine limit of 500 contact numbers (it wont') and if it syncs easily and reliably (it will) and if the web browser really works and if Google Maps are easy to use on the iPhone, these things are going to be the hottest new business gadget since the original Palm Pilot.
It's about efficiency. Carry one or two fewer devices everywhere I go. Carry one device that's easy to learn and easy to use, rather than so hard to learn that many users don't even know about the advanced features and so hard to use that the advanced features they know about rarely get touched. Sending text messages, checking email, and placing and receiving calls need to work well.
A few business people I know are going to get an iPhone for one feature: visual voicemail (random access to voicemail queue). They calculate that the time and annoyance they will save with that single feature more than justifies the cost of the device.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Because a) your attention is divided and b) it's NEVER polite no matter what you think. There are times that it's a necessary evil, but that's not the same thing as "polite".
What makes you think that people don't? The hottest phone on the market right now is the Motorola Razr. A phone that's valued more for its small size than its cunning text messaging features.
See paragraph above. If your statement was true, then the Razr wouldn't be so popular. You can't extrapolate your own specific wants/needs in high-end phones to the entire market if the data doesn't support it. Specifically, this engadget story lists the best selling phone as the Nokia 1100. A low-end candybar phone with a Black and White screen. The Razr trails behind with 50 million of its own sales. (According to the article.) "Big" phones like the Treo and Q don't even show up as a blip on the radar.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
It's definitely not just about aesthetics of the device. The primary driver behind the iPhone form factor is efficient use of device front real-estate. Buttons have been proliferating like mad on "smart phones for years, and it's not helping them sell to the broader market. Why? Well, the devices intimidate some users. Other users find them to be cumbersome. 40% of the surface is keypad, leaving only a tiny screen you can't really use for much besides text messages. They buttons can't be changed after they are stamped out. You may want QUERTY, somebody else might want right-hand-Dvorak. Somebody else wants a two-thumb layout. You may want a numeric keypad layout when you're dialing, but no other time.
Yes, the touch screen could be seen as a design risk, and it's possible that it will be rejected by the market. There are undoubtedly other people like you who are adicted to buttons, and dialing in the dark. I suspect that even most of those people will find that they can adapt to the iPhone easily enough, particularly if it provides haptic feedback as a user preference. (Some people might want that turned off -- something you can't do with a button.)
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.