NYTimes Speculates On the Next iPhone 302
Achromatic1978 writes "The NYT has a story on the next revision of the iPhone, and discusses what will become of the iPhone, now that the hype is starting to slow (Jobs goal for 2008 was ten million iPhones sold — as of the first quarter, only 1.7 million have left the shelves). The WWDC is the rumored release date for a next version, and Jobs has promised that this year will see a 3G iPhone released."
My favorite moment... (Score:1, Insightful)
I love speculating about the iPhone (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Video conferencing the ace in the hole? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So much more data (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that Mobile Safari performs well helps, but my phone is easy enough to use online, I just can't see paying $50 for the data usage on top of my already exorbitant rate plan with AT&T...
In a recession here.. (Score:2, Insightful)
They will easily do 10+ million this year (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They totally screwed themselves (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:you know what that means .... (Score:3, Insightful)
Numbers (Score:3, Insightful)
They aren't going to attract new buyers with hype like last time. Most people who really want one have one.
Their biggest untapped market are the people who are holding out for v2. I'm one of them.
The iPhone would serve me very well. But I generally don't buy version 1 of anything.
Especially when it's so crippled. Jail breaking stuff like pseudo-GPS, lack of Cut & Paste, printing, file transfer, heck it's on the network but it's almost a dumb terminal.
We version 2 holdouts are Apple's biggest iPhone 2 market. Let's go Apple, what are you waiting for?
Oh yeah, and it better be good.
Maybe they were looking beyond the US market (Score:4, Insightful)
still catching up on features (Score:5, Insightful)
These are all standard features on many Nokia and Windows Mobile phones.
Apple is still just trying to catch up. The only reason for strong US sales is that US carriers have been pushing such feature-poor phones that even the iPhone seems like an improvement.
Re:Round it up! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My favorite moment... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How's Open Moko doing? (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the article, I think it's obvious the iPhone hype is lessened, but that doesn't mean sales are bad. The way I see it, they've already sold 1.7 million phones this year without a major revision. 10 million seems attainable.
Re:So much more data (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Jobs goal for 2008 was ten million iPhones sold (Score:5, Insightful)
When Apple tried to compete for market share in the 90s, it did make some gains, but almost went bankrupt in the process, because margins collapsed. Steve Jobs, in contrast to the Apple management of the 90s, has always followed a strategy of selling high-priced, differentiated products, and that's why Apple never went the way of Commodore or Atari in the 80s (even though Commodore had much higher market share), and managed to recover from near death in the 90s, under market-share-driven management, after Jobs returned.
The fact is, Apple may only have 3 pc or so of the market, but as long as that 3 pc prefer Macs enough over other PCs that they're willing to pay a premium for them, Apple can earn a higher profit. It doesn't matter if the other 97 pc prefer PCs (and it's probably less than 97 pc who actually do), because they have so many choices (Dell, HP, Fujitsu-Siemens, etc) that it's difficult for any of the manufacturers serving that 97 pc to earn margins anywhere close to Apple's.
Incidentally, I'm not in the 3 pc (or 5 pc, 10 pc, whatever) who prefer Macs to Windows PCs, so I would only buy a Mac if it was the same price or less for equivalent hardware, including warranty, expected maintenance costs over the life cycle (eg new batteries, upgrades) and so on. So, Steve Jobs would be stupid to try to sell to people like me when he can sell to the ones willing to pay more.
I sometimes wonder what a company with Bill Gates running the management/technical side and Steve Jobs running the marketing/design side would have produced. Microsoft may be more successful overall, but both of those guys are the top entrepreneurs of their generation by far, and have been extremely successful with different business models (with a focus on market share for Microsoft, versus product differentiation for Apple).
One Advantage (Score:5, Insightful)
I pretty much agree with everything else you wrote, but there's one advantage in being able to switch: the carrier will be slightly less inclined to treat you like dogcrap in order to keep you from leaving.
Availability depressing sales? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:you know what that means .... (Score:4, Insightful)
Then again I just wish people would use the real numbers. While only 2 million units had been sold in the first 5 months Apple gave themselves 18 months to hit 10 million.
With the fact you haven't been able to buy an iPhone for the past month, as thy are sold out EVERYWHERE and most of Europe can't use Edge massively limiting marketshare.
I won't be surprised that the 3G iPhone sells two million units in the first month.
Re:They will easily do 10+ million this year (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Video conferencing the ace in the hole? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does this really matter? I know this has been "the next big thing" with telephones since at least the 80s, but let's be logical.
If they did, we'd have it on our land lines and such already. The customer has spoken, they much prefer the ability to roam around the house with a cordless phone than to have a video chat.
People want to walk around with them. They want to drive while using them. They want to eat at restaurants, use restrooms, and anything else you can think of. They don't want to have to stand still and stare at something for the duration of a phone call.
You think the talk time on an iPhone is nice? How about with 3G where they may, through some feat of engineering, manage to get 1/2 to 2/3s that? Now engage the CPU to manage things, and video encoders and decoders (since the CPU won't be able to keep up with encoding it), and run the camera all the time. Guess how long your video chat will last. I'd say 15-30 min would be an impressive feat.
You'll need a camera on the front of the phone. That means either it's in a bad spot to take pictures, it needs to be turnable, or you need to have two. Of course I can already video conference using iChat if I'm near my computer. I often don't want people to see me when I'm talking to them (often doesn't add anything to the conversation, just takes away my attention to other things around me).
I'm pretty sure we'd have something by now (at least 1 FPS video or 15 FPS postage stamp video) on most phones if people cared. I think my phone supports voice and video SMS. Anyone actually use those?
Video conferencing is one of that those amazing technologies that seems to make a great demo but almost no one seems to care about for an actual product.
Re:Jobs goal for 2008 was ten million iPhones sold (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be better to point out that they are focused on a different market... and have 95% of that market.
Not to mention how well that have done since his return.
Best case is to ignore the troll.
Re:They will easily do 10+ million this year (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides this, didn't Jobs say he wanted to sell 10M iPhones by2008, not in 2008? Geeze and I'm not even a Mac fanboi (double checks). I hear a lot of unjustified bashing and it seems like people are missing basic ques. 3G + deals in foreign countries + techno-lust + the Christmas season and business apps = easily 10M iPhones by the end of the year, I say.
Re:you know what that means .... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Numbers (Score:3, Insightful)
I could be mistaken, but I believe the answer is "June 9th, 2008."
Re:They will easily do 10+ million this year (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the kind of thing I'm thinking. They've only sold 600,000 of them a month. Only?.
That's a great sales pace for anything, especially when it costs $400+ and needs a big monthly contract. I mean, are comparing this to the iPod? The iPod was new and had a great interface. Cell phones are already insanely common, and available free (with contract). That contract also keeps you from switching. That's quite a bit to overcome for sales.
How many of any given model of blackberry do the carriers sell a month? Is it 600,000? Not for all carries, just one (AT&T would make a great comparison for obvious reasons).
Then there is the rest of the world. Many people seemed to snub it due to lack of 3G. This was supposed to be an especially big problem in Europe. Right now there are only a handful of countries where you can get an iPhone legally (i.e. from a carrier that is supposed to carry the thing). Many countries don't have them.
Heck, I'd bet their sales would jump a ton if they did nothing but sell the iPhone to every major country.
Yes. Only $24 million a month, gross, from the phones. That doesn't include plans, accessories, kickbacks, etc.
Poor Apple. They can only sell a little more than 1/2 a Rhode Island's Population of units per month. Awww.
Re:How's Open Moko doing? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll buy a FreeRunner (despite the dumb name) as soon as it's available, which sounds like it will be pretty soon. Steve says [openmoko.org] he might get phones as soon as June 1, which is only 3 days from now.
$400 (or 10% less, in 10-packs) is no big deal, considering the absolute cheapest service plans seem to run about $30/month. People complained about the iPhone's upfront cost, too, but most failed to note that the minimum service plan (2 years) cost about $2000. The hardware cost is peanuts compared to the service.
I don't see the big appeal of Android. It's a software platform, the few hardware devices for it (which are not available yet) look like ass, it uses a special JVM, and development for it looks like a pain. That said, I'm all for more free-software phones (though it seems unclear if all of Android is really open-source). I just don't see what's innovative about Android. What exactly is the benefit of a Linux-based phone if you can only run Java code on it?
Re:How's Open Moko doing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is why I think an open platform can displace iPhone.
It takes a major bump in functionality to displace an entrenched market player. If the iPhone weren't crippled an open phone platform would have much the same adoption dynamics as Linux vs. Microsoft/Apple desktops: A sliver and gradual growth.
But the iPhone IS massively crippled, and attempts to un-cripple it are met with update-to-brick attacks as Apple tries to protect its revenue model and that of its carrier partner(s). And it seems likely that competition could lead them to uncripple it broadly and rapidly enough to prevent a market shift.
This leaves the open platform with an opportunity to make massive functionality improvements and additions that Apple/AT&T-etc. can't or won't match. And that could driver the shift.
As Ubuntu has shown, you no longer have to be a geek to use the advanced feature set of an open platform. The same could be true of an open phone platform: Out of the box already far more functional than iPhone (or whatever), download new whiz-bangs with a few touches as it is developed and you decide you want it - or get your retailer's service department to do it for you for a very nominal fee (or the techie in the next cube or your internet-savvy kid to do it for nothing).
Re:One Advantage (Score:3, Insightful)
Exchange! (Score:2, Insightful)
Version 2 of the iPhone software (which will be released to v1 iPhones, too) is supposed to have great Exchange integration. I think this will be a HUGE selling point for iPhones as it will become a viable tool in the market that it is priced in.
(I for one won't hook up Exchange to my iPhone unless my company wants to help pay the bill... but that's just me)
Re:I'll tell you why (Score:5, Insightful)
...2) Steve Jobs is a control freak
I'm not at all sure I agree with this, but I do see a lot of advantages in Apple's "control freak" theory. Basically, in the iPhone model, the phone and the carrier are a single integrated structure. The exclusive agreement gives them the ability to dictate exactly what the service provides and how. So the customers are buying a system, not a set of parts that they assemble into their own system.
Having been part of a lot of situations in which each vendor says that the problem isn't in their part of the system, it's in the other guy's part, I can see a lot of advantage to them in keeping tight control (so the pieces do play well together), and even some advantage to the customer (in that when things fail, they don't get run around in circles trying to figure out which vendor to go to,)
The iPhone essentially a featureless phone.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple's apparent apathy toward consumer feedback and requests for functionality is a serious turn off. Irregardless of whether it's a first-generation device or not, it seems they spend more time and effort trying to keep this phone "locked down" than in pursuing more useful functionality.
I'm sick of having to visit viewmymessage.com (which doesn't always work well) every time someone sends an MMS. The iPhone is devoid of basic document viewing capabilities, the camera is average.
At this stage, after a slightly buggy 1.1.4 release, the fact that I must "jailbreak" my phone to make it more useful is rather sad. This little phone is capable of so much more.
I'm not alone in this feeling; several of my friends and co-workers who have the phone are growing tired of it.
Conversely, RIM/Blackberry seems to have done it right when it comes to useful phones. Their Blackberry Bold (due in July for AT&T) will be 3G, can do iTunes, the screen size is the same as the iPhone, a real QWERTY keyboard, etc.
That will be my new phone. The iPhone will very likely become an overpriced, featureless paperweight (unless I sell it).
I love Apple computer systems, they are top notch, but I feel they messed up with the iPhone. From what I've heard of the 3G phone, there's no motivation for me to hang out and spend more money on the product line.
What I found very disappointing recently was when I posted a politely critical message about the slow development cycle of iPhone features on discussions.apple.com that got "moderated" (read: deleted) with a private response saying I wasn't allowed to be critical of Apple's internal processes.
Not only was that generally petty, I think it speaks volumes (image control, etc).
Goodbye, iPhone...
Re:They totally screwed themselves (Score:3, Insightful)
But probably more money. So which is better, more sales, or more profit? The deal they stuck with ATT seems to be very lucrative to Apple. Apple could have sold out a long time ago, with their OS, even with the ipod, but they stuck to their way of doing business. Not going for the lowest commmon denominator.
Re:Jobs goal for 2008 was ten million iPhones sold (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How's Open Moko doing? (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no evidence of this. Only one firmware update has bricked phones, and this was found to be due to an *improper unlock procedure* that overwrote some data, but not others, resulting in a very confused updater and hence, the bricking. You cannot seriously expect Apple to bend over backwards to make sure they're not bricking hacked phones.
And if you look back into interwebnet history, you will see that the iPhone Dev Team released a patcher that "fixed" the broken unlock, and from that point forward no Apple update has ever bricked a phone. It just restores it to its locked, factory state, which is perfectly reasonable.
You're missing the main reason the iPhone is popular - usability. It has an incredibly unified UI that most phones simply do not have, and its inter-app integration is impressive as well (though can be improved). Camera tied into email, maps tied into web searches, a unified contact-management database that spans calendars, phonebooks, and even websites...
... This is something that open source has not demonstrated so far. If Android will be anything like Linux, what you'll end up with is *many* disparate projects that are by themselves quite functional (and maybe even usable, but odds are most teams will not place that as a priority), but fail to integrate with each other. There will be some effort to unify these things, but like Linux what you'll simply end up with are several large camps, confused consumers, and not so much integration in anything.
Apple has a developer base that worships the ground it walks on, and this has proven to be a strength in both MacOS X and iPhone development. You've got guys that will emulate the look and feel of first-party iPhone apps to the T, and design apps with a UI-first perspective. This is what it will take to make a successful phone - a complete software suite that is integrated with each other, with consistent and logical UI. Apple is in a position to deliver this, is anyone else?
Re:It would have helped... (Score:2, Insightful)
Even if you stay with AT&T, I can't imagine anyone wanting a non-jailbroken iPhone. It's all the third-party applications that makes the iPhone so awesome.
Re:I'll tell you why (Score:4, Insightful)
It was obviously in AT&T's interest to secure an exclusivity agreement. Whether the iPhone deal would have fallen through without such an exclusivity clause, I don't know.
Now, let's remember that most of the world is GSM/HSDPA-based, and distributing a CDMA/EV-DO (Verizon) phone would require essentially the development of a new iPhone (to a certain extent).
Finally, let's remember that AT&T had to implement certain new network features for the iPhone, notably to support visual voicemail. I'm sure that Apple was happy to have an exclusive agreement in order to have more control over the services available.
In the end, distributing the iPhone through Verizon would certainly increase the addressable market (but if you consider the global market, only marginally). Nevertheless, I'm sure that AT&T compromised in order to obtain the exclusive deal and that both companies benefited from it.
Re:I'll tell you why (Score:5, Insightful)
So, Apple's incentive was that they made more money.
Also, I think there is an element of long term strategy. Nobody knows better than Jobs that big, splashy product launches can be followed by more big splashy product launches.
I bet a lot of people switched to AT&T just to get an iPhone. I bet there aren't a lot of people who would be willing to spend the launch price for an iPhone on their carrier, who didn't eventually get one.
So, think of it this way: Apple probably sold as many iPhones as they could make at a price that was shocking, but not utterly insane. Naturally they could manufacture more at an insane price, but they probably wouldn't have made more profit, and certainly not as much of a splash. The way the whole iPod thing works is you've got to see somebody else with one, then want one for yourself.
Now notice that as soon as the demand slackened, they dropped the price, which means they're watching the adoption curve carefully. When they've milked the universe of people willing to switch to AT&T for everything they can (demonstrating their monster clout to all the other carriers at the same time), they'll have a new, really cool iPhone waiting. If they've calculated things right, this will be right around the time their exclusive deal with AT&T runs out.
Which means that a whole bunch of people who've been sitting on the fence because of AT&T will be able to get one with their current carrier -- for a hefty consideration. It'll be like the second coming of Beatlemania, or like Jobs was peddling an elixir that cured cancer and increased your sex appeal by 800%.
It will be like nothing you've ever seen before.
Anyways, that'd be Jobsian strategic thinking. He stays ahead by planning ahead.
Re:you know what that means .... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:you know what that means .... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:still catching up on features (Score:3, Insightful)
Except... people do use them.
If you look at the total package Apple has already leapt ahead of the competition, and they know it, which is why they are all trying to make touchscreen interfaces (and failing miserably).
Apple's touch screen is a gimmick and a horrible interface for anything other than watching videos and simple web browsing. It's the result of Jobs's obsessive hatred of buttons, not sound design.
There's a reason Blackberries, Palms, and Nokias are so much more popular than the iPhone and other touch phones.
Apple didn't even pioneer the touch screen interface on phones, Palm did, and Palm did a good job. But keyboards won in the end because they are the right choice for a smartphone.
Re:Round it up! (Score:3, Insightful)
In plain simple english, they want to hit 1% market share which is 10 million iPhones at some point in 2008.
Re:still catching up on features (Score:3, Insightful)
-They use them but they suck. If the only sandwich you were given for years was a shit sandwich then you probably learned to tolerate a shit sandwich. The iPhone has opened my eyes as to how crappy the other vendors offerings are and it's been the phone I've been waiting for since I started buying phones.
"Apple's touch screen is a gimmick and a horrible interface for anything other than watching videos and simple web browsing. I"
-Why is it a gimmick? It works great. It's easy to use. It's completely intuitive. That's not a gimmick, THAT is exactly what good interface design is supposed to be.
"There's a reason Blackberries, Palms, and Nokias are so much more popular than the iPhone and other touch phones."
-The iPhone has not even been out one year and you're trying to make the argument that the reason the other manufacturers sell more is because of better design?It's more likely the years of head start in getting market share. Palm is circling the drain, Blackberry is so scared shitless by the very interface design that you mock that they're scrambling to implement touch into it, and Nokia makes primarily basic phones (with a few poorly designed smart phones thrown in here and there).
"Apple didn't even pioneer the touch screen interface on phones"
-But they're the first one to do it right.
"keyboards won in the end because they are the right choice for a smartphone."
-If "the end" was a year ago then you might have a point, but the iPhone showed the keyboard is a very inflexible and limiting design. Fortunately "the end" is not here and phones are evolving into touch interfaces.
Re:How's Open Moko doing? (Score:3, Insightful)
As Ubuntu has shown, you no longer have to be a geek to use the advanced feature set of an open platform.
But most people don't want the advanced feature set. They want a basic one that works well with everything, all the time.
10 millionth total by end of 2008 is the goal (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't think it would helped that much... (Score:3, Insightful)