With news of the new Apple IPhone being released at Mac World I started to ponder what kind of effect this is going to have on the cell-phone market in general in North America, and I came mainly to this conclusion, zero. You may ponder how I could possibly deduce this from all of the hype surrounding this device, but my reasons do have basis.
First, although the phone is revolutionary from an interface and design standpoint Apple has clearly stated that they will not provide any toolkit or outside development SDK, which means that this device will solely rely on applications developed for it by Apple. This does not mean however that it will be impossible to extend what runs on the device since it was announced that the IPhone will support Widgets, but the amount that can be accomplished with these widgets is far less then a full blown application.
Second, it seems to me that IPhone is purely marketed at the consumer market, and although most people think this is an Apple advantage, exploiting Rim’s and Palm’s inability to penetrate these markets there are really more reasons then simple execution issues that have plagued smart phones from penetrating the wide spread consumer market. Think about it this way, smart phones require data plans, and data plans are crippling to any consumer. With the average data plan, in Canada, costing $45 a month on top of your voice plan most consumers are unwilling or unable to pay this on a monthly basis. So that leaves our consumers who want these devices to turn to their employers in order to get the smart phones they so desperately desire. The problem here being that most businesses are not interested in fancy interfaces, and nice graphics, they are merely interested in how this phone will help their bottom line, and usually that is accomplished through tight integration with their systems.
RIM has this market dominated for that exact reason their Enterprise integration is phenomenal. Now people may argue that data plans have no where to go but down in price, however this may take years, and it’s not really guaranteed since there is the possibility that the cost may go up in order for Providers to upgrade their networks to support the added load.
For me I see the IPhone being a great product, and I know it will be very well executed, however I just don’t see the main stream consumer market adopting this phone, due to it’s overwhelming cost, not just for the phone but more for the plans that are going to be associated with this phone.
We all know that the Youth market is what drove the IPod to it’s crazed success, and I don’t see mommy and daddy getting ready to go out and drop another $600 on a phone for their little Bobby or Suzy, when it’s going to cost them another $100 a month just to keep the phone on the network.
kungfuice General, Technology
