iPhone — undecided customer
By Vivek | January 11th, 2007 at 02:14 pm ET
Among all the positive and negative thoughts about iPhone, below is my take on some of the issues:
(-?)Internet Access: iPhone enables Internet browsing over WiFi which will be great option over the large sized screen. But you can easily write off browsing on iPhone over Cingular’s Edge network unless Cingular gets serious about is data speeds. Also Cingular or Apple haven’t disclosed the pricing of the data plan for iPhone. I hope Cingular doesn’t force users to go for bundled data plan with iPhone.
(-?)iTunes over WiFi iPod: We all had wanted this feature and waited for a long long time and really really hoped Apple will deliver it. But as it seems right now, this is a no go. Even after all the hype, technology, research, and investment, why do we still need to stick a PC/Mac in between to get on with our digital life? Maybe Yahoo or someone else can put their player onto WiFi enabled Nokias of the world to give Apple a run for money.
(-)2 Year Contracts: Selling a Mac is very different from selling a mobile. Mac buying can be impulsive, but same can’t be true for iPhone. Most of the people like to stick around with their existing phones till their contract ends and only than they negotiate a deal with another carrier. With each of the mobile carriers moving over to 2 year contracts, it will take that much longer for iPhone to penetrate the market. Further, uptake will be limited by Cingular’s exclusivity in the iPhone deal. Although Apple never claims that it wants to capture the complete mobile market, but they would have really liked if they were the ones to decide it.
(+)App Favs: To put it simply - you can’t find the same application installed on 2 different mobile. Such has been the state of highly bifurcated mobile device market, that none of application providers can claim domination over majority of mobile handsets. Not Google, not Microsoft, not Yahoo. This works perfectly for Apple since most of the users won’t miss out on their favorite applications when they move over to iPhone. A very painless migration for all!!
(-)Development community: Nokia has a good market share of the mobile apps that are launched and strong development community to power innovative application development. Just look at some of the most promising technologies in making from startups like Truphone, Fring, iSkoot, Skype, Gizmo, and Imity, all of whom first support the Symbian phones. After Nokia, rest of the market share is taken up by Moto, Sony, Treo/Microsoft Mobile and few more European mobile companies. When Apple opens up its platform(if it plans) in June, it will be looking to grab share from either of these development communities which like any other development platform take its own sweet amount of time.
(+-)Version 1.0: And remember this is just Version 1.0 of the iPhone. Just like any other first generation device, iPhone will come with its own set of bugs and their hacks that can make it a costly investment if it has too many of them. Also Nokia, Moto and others have years of experience in building mobile UIs and would for sure understand user needs better atleast in the voice calling aspect. When a nut-case is running after your poor ass(after paying $500 or $600) at 2 AM, you won’t like the idea of looking at and fumbling with keys on a newly designed mobile touchpad to call 911. Still iPhone should serve as a lesson for mobile manufactures to stop releasing a barrage of mobiles and take up a more standardized approach.
