Another iPhone article: the time after iPhone
This article is very provocative : Communities Dominate Brands: Entering iPhone Era: Marking Time in Mobile
My reaction :
“I like the dream you have - it is a pity reality will soon be faced by both you and Apple.
The biggest problem they have is to get the consumer to use it - and love it so much that it creates a buzz similar to the iPod. Outside of America they are using the same tactic of selling with one operator - this will be a big barrier.
Next is the price - it will cost even when the operator subsidies the cost over 12 months.
Then there is the size - too large for most consumers - no matter how friendly it is.
Then there is the greasy screen which time and time again has been shown to be a complaint of people.
They may get around the screen grease and in 2 years time they may get around the operator lock-in, hopefully they will do as with the iPod and create a iPhone micro and nano to get around the size issues. Then the cost must be dealt with - phones are commodity now - not high price, if you want volume you need to drop the price - or offer something unique for the price - there is nothing that unique apart from the logo. Unfortunately a consumer in a shop will not understand how friendly it is to use - and most of them have now been trained to cope with the unfriendliness of Nokia and Motorola - so they will not “get” it straight away. By the time it picks up a consumer conciousness for friendly it will be copied and no longer unique.
It should try and go for the business market - compete with RIM and microsoft - there is money there - but also a need for email integration. They are going to be a consumer device in a market that is saturated and not valued.
All of these hurdles must be jumped before they can even expect it to become the remarkable achievement the iPod was.
There maybe a BI and AI but no more than there is a BB and AB (blackberry), BN and AN (Nokia) and BM and AM (Microsoft).”
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