Apple Stiff Arms the competition with iPhone 3.0
Posted by melting on Jun 15, 2009
With the latest HW set to launch, Apple is also gearing up for it’s latest firmware update for its iPhone and iPod touch users. This update is just what Apple needs to keep the competition at bay. There are many new features that are great for usability, should have been in the original software, and help developers make even better apps.
First, the features that should have been there from the start: cut, copy, and paste. Since people are thinking the iPhone is the start of truly mobile computing vs. a smartphone, there is no excuse from not having this capability from the beginning.
There are so many features that will truly make this device even more usable and powerful. The first is the landscape built in apps. Even though the biggest complaint about the iPhone is the lack of a physical keyboard, it is actually pretty easy to type on in landscape mode. Apple has realized this and improved all of their apps to take advantage of this ease. Apple has also added MMS. While their are many features that make the iPhone a multimedia device, “syncing is so nineties”. This is at least one more way to share some of that media without syncing.
Apps will only get better from here with all of the new api’s available to them. The feature with a likely big impact is the push notifications. Apps that talk to services can now leave you logged in to their service and push messages to you. AIM, google talk, yahoo messenger etc., will now be able to let have continuous conversations. Another feature to have a big impact will be the ability for Apps to talk with custom hardware accessories.
On a slightly gloomy note there are a few things that won’t be coming for US users. The coolest feature that won’t be supported by AT&T is tethering. Tethering was created to allow users to connect to the web on their laptops via their iPhone when out in the wilderness of the world.
The upgrade will be free for current iPhone users and $9.95 for iPod touch users.
Read about the iPhone 3Gs
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.
