3G iPhone Going Into Production In May
A few folks noted the rumor mill churning over 3G iPhones coming soon. Apparently they might be going into production as early as May, and announced somewhere in the 2nd quarter. Hopefully they manage to stick a GPS and another 16 gigs of memory in this one.
Because the iPhone was a flop outside North America.
If it did, I'd buy it at any cost!
Never underestimate the power of the 'coolness' factor. Also, you write off the nicer interface as if its somewhat insignificant. That's the CORE component of any consumer electronic market. The public is going to interact with the most part through the interface, if it sucks, they're not going to spend the time to learn it.
Like it or hate it, you got to admit that the iPhone has a pretty nice interface and it's not too hard to learn. When my mom and aunts, who are in their 40s and not very technologically adept, decided to pick up iPhones and can use them as well as me, you know they're doing something right.
My blog
We're tired of...
"Three PDAs for the Elven Lords
Seven cell phones for the Dwarf Lords and their halls of stone
Nine MP3 players for the
Three Cell Phones for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven PDAs for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine MP3 players for Mortal Men doomed to die,
We want...
One Gadget the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Gadget to rule them all, One Gadget to find them,
One Gadget to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
***
(ie: I don't want a separate cell phone, PDA, MP3 player, GPS and batman utility belt. Especially NOT when the technology is available to easily have all 4 in a single device. And the only thing stopping it from happening is BS marketing idiots.)
Such is the case for most of the connectivity technologies that see more rapid adoption overseas. There are large areas of the USA that are simply not densely populated enough to justify the expense of rolling out cutting-edge networks there. It isn't a matter of the US simply being behind the technological curve, as some like to assume.
Pardon the PHB nature of this next statement, but these are the types of differences that turn a 3 year ROI into a 10 year ROI, and slow down adoption.
I'm sure they're also attracting the people that have tried out the browsers on their phones, and found them so painful to use that they've just given up. I'm one of them - I never use the browser on my Samsung Z560 unless I really have to. In contrast, I'll browse the web on my iPod Touch quite happily - it's not as good as a desktop browser, but it's not that far off.
In fact, I was ranting to my boss just now about the fact that my phone browser forgets cookies when the browser is closed (which happens every time you close the clamshell, annoyingly). It's particularly apparent when using PayPal Mobile, which shows you a regular login page by default. You can opt to log in using your mobile number and a PIN, and if you've got the cookie you'll be automatically redirected. Mine, unfortunately, forgets the cookie.
So - what is the reason for not having 3G on the east and west coast of USA? I would guess the population density there is comparable to most of Europe.
And don't think we have 100% 3G coverage over here(Denmark) - far from it. I would guess by area we're around 40%(Complete guesstimate), but coverage by population is at least 80% - I see nothing that prevents USA from doing something similar.