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iPhone, it's just a phone...
What is it about the iPhone that drives consumers and mobile operators into the 4th dimension where normal behaviour no longer holds true?
Does this technically-deficient handset do something new and wonderful, will it change the way consumers use wireless networks, is the touchscreen interface the Holy Grail of all UIs that a computer company in the U.S. has stumbled upon…?
Call me cynical after too many years listening to 'breakthrough' product announcements that will galvanise the mobile user, but the iPhone is just a handset, albeit with some interesting features--supported by little more than a cunning plan involving huge marketing budgets and PR expenditure.
If nothing else it might educate users to the possible benefits of the mobile Internet, and could provoke the likes of Nokia, Samsung and LG to overhaul this new entrant. Just who does Apple think they are? After all, the only good handsets are made in Europe or Asia….or will this U.S.-based upstart cause some other dimensional thinking in Finland and Korea? -Paul
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Comments
Posted by Anonymous | November 22, 2007 - 5:16am
Paul- I can only assume that your diatribe above was designed to elicit feedback and if so you have succeeded. Americans are frequently criticized for being ethnocentric and making categorically sweeping comments but you may have created a new category of obtuseness.
Have you actually used an iPhone? Have you used a HSDPA/UMTS/HSUPA device? I can only assume that your day starts off with why it won't be a good day versus looking at the potential of every morning holds.
The iPhone introduced an interface, browser and OS for a smart phone that has raised the bar even in your beloved European and Korean worlds. Apple didn't just layer a touch interface at the epidermis layer of Windows Mobile as other have. The iPhone could have been better, but would a QWERTY keyboard been the answer or perhaps a UMTS derivative? Not likely as it would have detracted from the interface or drastically drained the battery life. Will there be improvements? Certainly. Do I hope my Nokia, HTC, and Palm devices could actually go for more than half a day in UMTS mode, I certainly do. Do I wish I had a RIM device that performed above EDGE in non CDMA markets, I certainly do. Will they improve, certainly.
To categorically dismiss RIM, Palm, and Motorola for the innovations they have brought to the handset market is naive and is contrary to popular demand. I suggest you tap the Fierce Wireless pool of demo devices and expand your experience beyond Finnish and Korean manufacturers. You may find the world to be more dynamic than you think. You may even find it to be glass half full.
Chad
Posted by Anonymous | December 6, 2007 - 11:36am
your remark is fully correct,
the mobile phone is more and more
a consumer good as a car and, as such,
show the status of the owner (besides
making phone call which is increasingly, for a large segment of the market,
a standard function assumed to be the same for
any given mobile).
the hype about iPhone relates to the close
knitted - somehow geek based - Apple community,
good guys but they are just
a segment in the market.
Probably they are a significant segment in US
but a nothing in EU, hence the demise of the iPhone in EU.
In my opinion if you want to make an hit
in the fashion segment in EU just take a look
at LG Prada or Samsung Armani or the exclusive
Nokia Vertu.
Anyway personally I am waiting for the first Missoni mobile (in case that some marketing of mobile phone manufacturer reads this: please
make it as clamshell thanks)
and not for the current, or next, iPhone :-)
Posted by Anonymous | December 18, 2007 - 4:36pm
Everytime I see an expert comment on the iPhone, it is someone who usually does not have one and do not intend to have one because it does not have this or that.
You know what? if the iPhone is no big deal, no expert will even write about it. I do have an iPhone and it definitely does many things that no smartphone cannot do at this point. Go figure..The closest imitator as of now is the LG voyager and I did check it. I feel like as though the touch interface is like going back in time when touch was being invented. So you can touch all you want and you won't get anything close to the iPhone.
Andy - the happy iPhoner
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