iPhone a joke?
Tuesday, 30 January 2007 16:08 pm
Yes it is.
I agree with this article on many fronts. Rafael writes about how his generation - which I guess I’m part off - does not see anything new in the iPhone as released by Apple.
Of all the products Apple has churned out, the only thing I have purchased is an iPod. But I must say that since I purchased a mobile phone with built-in Windows Mobile 5.0 - I no longer use the iPod. I’ve got a 2GB memory card in my phone, enough for a good selection of music. And I can do a ton of other stuff with my mobile phone that I can’t do with my iPod - thanks to the included Office-like functionalities.
The iPod and all other mp3 devices are intermediate devices. They will disappear as soon as they’re integrated into mobile phones. No one wants to carry around these two devices if they could comfortably sit in one. So with that in mind it is just a product that Apple HAD to launch to protect future market share - and as usual, they did it with a marketing boom (nothing wrong here!). At the end of the day there’s nothing new about the iPhone.
I’m much more interested in the Apple TV product. It offers the functionality of connecting your TV set with your PC to allow you to see or listen to pictures, music or video stored on your PC. There are many alternative products available that do the same but they are mostly smaller niche brands. Apple could really make a hit with this product.
I believe the brand that is able to take the seat in a household’s living rooms by connecting up TV sets with PCs and storage servers in the house will be the next big hit. So far the big brands in this area are Microsoft (XBOX 360) and Apple (Apple TV).
Microsoft is - so far - still largely positioning the XBOX 360 as a gaming focused device, so with Apple focusing the Apple TV solely on connectivity it might open up this market and bring TV-PC connectivity to the masses.
Stay tuned!