Apple big in smart-phones or big in phones?
Posted by melting on Apr 26, 2009
Ever since Apple wowed the world with it’s iPhone and follow on iPhone 3G everyone was wondering what market share would be stolen from Microsoft Windows Mobile and Symbian OS’s as well as RIM, Nokia, HTC, Samsung, and others. As many have pointed out over the last year and half the iPhone is a growth engine for Apple. It is gobbling market share for the smartphone market left and right.
In Q4 of 2008 calendar year Apple grabbed 10.7% of marketshare of the worldwide smart-phone industry. This is some feat for a company that wasn’t in the cell phone industry, which some thought to be a crowded market, two years ago.
Despite all of this growth it still only has 1.5% of global cell phone market. It doesn’t seem to be Apple’s mojo to cut capabilities in products and sell them at low end prices.
Two trends that do start to make some sense when I try to come up with my own strategy if I were in El Jobso’s Tim Cook’s shoes are netbooks and predicted smartphone growth of 6% for 2009.
First 6% growth for smart-phones in 2009 seems like a small number, but in context this is huge. Most industries this year are at best predicted to stay the same or contract so this market is going to continue to head up. So why would Apple want to look down to the basic handset market that is likely to become even more heavily commoditized?
Second huge opportunity is netbooks. While I think this is a dirty word for Apple it points to some pretty cool opportunities. First netbooks are typically rather slow and operate in a diminished capacity. If you spin this and retool the name to something like iTablet or iPod Touch HD then you may get somthing interesting.
So if you put these two trends together you may start to get to a strategy that we can see in June. Perhaps a new type of device that can get its mobility from the iPod world and its power from the Mac lineup then we can see something that can truly bridge the gap. The other thing this does nicely is allow the current iPhone 3G be sold at lower pricepoints, perhaps even $99, which would drive this market share even higher.
Since I am quickly becoming an “Apple Fanboy,” I certainly hope so.
Modu – The new Handspring
Posted by melting on Mar 5, 2008
In the past several weeks I have seen a bit of news about a new cellular handset maker, Modu. This startup is trying to create a whole new spin on the cell phone.
Their product which shares the same name as the company, Modu, is an extremely small cell phone with limited functionality. This, however, is not the new and impressive part of the story. This phone is can be inserted into a “jacket” and a whole new look, feel, form, and function is born.
What this gives you is the ability to have different cell phones with standard settings, phone number, and storage. Ideas presented by the company is putting Modu into a GPS jacket for use in the car, putting it into a touch screen mp3 player, and putting it into a computer for mobile internet connectivity.
I am not yet sold on this idea as a great candidate for mass adoption in the cell phone industry. I think this is great for the gadget lover as it may save a small amount of money by not having a cell phone radio in all your devices. Over all I don’t see this a savings in money but as a way to let devices remain specialized at being great at one thing. Other devices like the iphone are trying to have a good interface for many different functionalities. This as you may know is very difficult and that I believe is exactly why it has seen the success it has.
The punchline to this whole article and why I chose to share it with you is that this seems fairly similar with another device that has come and gone in the market. Not so hard to guess since I put it in the title, yes the similarity lies with Handspring. This company made devices that used the palm OS and were extremely similar in look, feel, and functionality to the palm HW at the time. Their product however could add other components to add functionality. A couple of examples that I remember was a phone, GPS, dictionary, and games.
While the pricing is not yet available I think this would be interesting to see how Modu and its “jackets” fair in the market. This example could very easily fit in with the precedent that Apple started with the iphone in that handset manufacturers can begin to make money from the customer and not need the middleman of the providers. I think the providers may like it because Modu itself ought to be relatively cheap and could be provided to everyone.
Only time will tell. Read more:
Blog title confusion
Posted by melting on Feb 23, 2008
I read the title of this blog article and my mind started to bend to try to understand.
The title you ask: “2 phones for everyone—if industry can’t get its act together.”
Well that seems simple enough Jacqui Cheng the ars technica author was simply stating that she thought the cellular telephone industry was headed for 200% market penetration if the industry could not add more features while still simplifying their interfaces. This seems simple but lets take a look at what that means.
