Is there an end to the iPhone clones?
Is there an end to the iPhone clones?
Ever since Apple launched its game-changing iPhone last summer, every handset vendor has been desperately trying to come up with its own iPhone clone. At the recent CTIA Wireless 2008 show in Las Vegas we saw the latest iPhone clone, the Samsung Instinct. Sprint plans to introduce the phone to consumers in June. The Instinct features full touch-screen functionality and allows consumers to access their most-used applications with a single finger tap.
But the Instinct is just one of many clones. Nokia has its "Tube" which it previewed earlier this month but hasn't released yet. Last spring, some analysts predicted that LG's Prada phone--offered by Verizon Wireless--would be that carrier's answer to the iPhone. Do you think any of these handsets are comparable to the iPhone? You can weigh in by answering this week's poll question. Click here vote.
While these phones have great features, I don't think any of them have the power to overtake the iPhone. Why? Because the handset manufacturers and the carriers are not taking into account the whole distribution channel and marketing push that Apple instigated with its iPhone launch. It wasn't just a great phone with a lot of interesting features. It was a distribution channel that included Apple stores across the country. Those stores are known for their customer service and hands-on user experience.
Plus, who can forget Apple's eye-catching advertisements that were all over the TV in anticipation of the launch? The buzz that was created by Apple prior to the iPhone launch was unlike anything I have ever seen for a wireless handset.
Andy Seybold, founder Andrew Seybold Inc., likes to call these iPhone clones "iPhone killers" and in his column earlier this week Andy talked about how IPKs lack the ecosystem that made the iPhone so popular and I agree with him.
It's time to stop comparing every new handset to the iPhone. Let's acknowledge that the iPhone was a game-changing event and one that won't be replicated over and over again. Let's get over our love affair with the iPhone. -Sue
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Comments
By FrankFred | Posted 3:47pm | April 11, 2008
Good column until the last sentence: "Let's get over our love affair with the iPhone."
By george | Posted 4:32pm | April 11, 2008
I believe you meant to say, "Lets get over our love affair with the iPhone as soon as someone comes up with something better, until then, it's the one."
Or how about, "Lets get over our love affair with the iPhone until the next generation comes out further leaving the also-ran's somewhere back in the 90's where their technology clearly was derived."
I know, "Lets get over our love affair with the iPhone and all get back to wondering if Vista sales will ever overtake XP."
By Sue | Posted 4:48pm | April 11, 2008
To clarify, what I meant by that sentence is that while the iPhone's contributions to the wireless industry were significant, I think it's time to move ahead and focus on the future. We've learned a lot of lessons from the iPhone and we will continue to do so, but let's not continue this hype cycle. Sue
By Anonymous | Posted 4:52pm | April 11, 2008
The iPhone is an overhyped crap for Mactards and fashion lemmings.
By Derek Kerton | Posted 7:48pm | April 11, 2008
Hi Sue,
I agree with most of your points, but I don't agree at all with this iPhone "ennui" which is now a growing trend. Everyone seems to be tired of talking about the iPhone, and of comparing all handsets to the iPhone, etc. Please don't
join the ennui bandwagon just because it's catching - I hear it a lot too, and reply with the following:
The iPhone was AND IS a seminal device. We agree that it's a game changer. But it's also what we know as a benchmark. And until competing phones surpass that benchmark, of course we should be comparing them to it.
It's just like so many currencies were compared to the price of gold for so many years, until the monetary supply surpassed that of gold. Should we have complained then that we were bored of always comparing to gold?
Or like the home run record of Hank Aaron that was the benchmark for hitters for so many decades. Decades! Any big hitter was invariably compared against that standard. Surely we can stomach using the iPhone as a benchmark for more than 12 months? At least until it is surpassed?
Sadly for many other vendors, it will likely be surpassed by Apple. I tried the Instinct at CTIA, and while a big leap forward that would have been an awesome phone in May 2007, today it still falls short of the gold standard. The version on display (beta) was glitchy and slow to respond. I really liked the haptics, though.
I'm not pointing this barb specifically at Samsung/Sprint, but other developers at the show need to understand there's more to the iPhone than a touch screen and big, colorful, sqared icons.
You and Andy are right to point out that Apple developed an entire ecosystem around the phone, and created an entire User Experience including retail, service, Itunes Music Store, etc. However, the iPhone UI itself bears greater mention, too.
The iPhone UI is more than a shell over a bunch of siloed applications. The applications were built from the ground up as a cohesive experience within the UI wrapper. This is the way the best phones will be made. The Instinct approach feels more like what Windows 3.1 was: a new UI on top of the old command-based OS.
So the other vendors/carriers still have a lot of catch up work to do in the high-end consumer segment, but we'll all benefit from the effort. And I, for one, will absolutely not cease comparisons to the best-of-breed, nor forgive devices (that claim to be IPKs) for falling short.
Oh, and I primarily use an HTC Tilt and an Nokia N95 (the N95 is another seminal device). I'm no Apple fanboy, I've never bought an Apple product, and the iPhone doesn't meet my needs. Like the Godfather says: nothin' personal, it's just business.
By Slothrop | Posted 9:23pm | April 11, 2008
Derek Kerton has it right - and I'm not sure you do. While the distribution channel and the ads are important, they would be worth nothing if the iPhone wasn't a unique and game-changing device. Anyone who has tried web browsing or listening to music on any other phone can instantly tell that these functions were built primarily as ways for the carrier to make money, NOT as smoothly functional elements of the phone experience. The experience of the iPhone is built around an easy to use and intuitive interface. Although there are certainly carrier and handset maker income streams built in (the high monthly service fee and the iTunes store most obviously), they are mostly in the background.
By James Saldaña | Posted 2:55am | April 13, 2008
I've heard this non-sense before. People think the iPhone is all about advertising hype, superior marketing, and distribution. Nonsense. You're thinking of Microsoft.
Wake up Sue. The iPhone is a game changer in just about every way that counts.
Yes, there were touch phones before the iPod and many more after, BUT not Multi-Touch (gesture), with a Proximity Sensor and an Accelerometer (think Nintendo Wii), with 300 patents to protect it from also-ran phones from Nokia and others. Above all a modern OS (OS X) with a REAL web browser and Wi-Fi to boot.
More importantly the iPhone is about integrated software design and a developer friendly SDK. For the average user this will result in a superior user environment that goes well beyond current phones with inferior operating systems and troublesome development models.
Also, the competitors won't beat Apple using a horizontal model of development, because they can't develop a product with the same level of integration that Apple can. Nor can they provide the ecosystem that iTunes / iTunes music store can provide.
Apple has changed the wireless phone market forever. Just like they have with Music and the first commercial non-DRM tracks, Apple has changed wireless well beyond hardware and software, being the first company to get revenue sharing from a wireless provider and circumvent them as the frontman.
You need to do some research.
It's funny how so many people these days think that when something is wildly popular and people are excited about it, it's just a fad or or some kind of infatuation (love affair). But the industry has changed and you just can see it, because your using "last years thinking" in a new age of technology.
We just see something you can't, because it's what we've been waiting for all along. Change.
Apple’s iPhone vs Smartphone Software Makers
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/03/07/apples-iphone-vs-smartphone-software-makers/#more-1618
iPhone 2.0 SDK: Video Games to Rival Nintendo DS, Sony PSP
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/03/20/iphone-20-sdk-video-games-to-rival-nintendo-ds-sony-psp/#more-1650
By klc | Posted 4:19am | April 13, 2008
People who wish they can get over the iphone soon will be sadly disappointed, I don't think we'll be getting over the iphone for at least the next 10 years. Because this is the embryo of the "future" mobile platform which everyone has been dreaming about.
It will only be growing more and more down the road. This is just only the beginning.
By Anonymous | Posted 3:31pm | April 13, 2008
"Let's get over our love affair with the iPhone. -Sue"
"To clarify, what I meant by that sentence is that while the iPhone's contributions to the wireless industry were significant, I think it's time to move ahead and focus on the future. We've learned a lot of lessons from the iPhone and we will continue to do so, but let's not continue this hype cycle. Sue"
Yes, time to forget about the iPhone and move forward to shilling for those who pay us.
By James Saldaña | Posted 6:27pm | April 13, 2008
@Sue "To clarify, what I meant by that sentence is that while the iPhone's contributions to the wireless industry were significant, I think it's time to move ahead and focus on the future. We've learned a lot of lessons from the iPhone and we will continue to do so, but let's not continue this hype cycle. Sue"
What lessons have been learned and by who? Also-ran phone makers like Nokia have learned nothing. They are following the same FAILED strategy that Microsoft used to develop it's iPod killing Zune. Seven years after the debut of the iPod, no one has come close to learning it's lessons as Apple gobbled up 80% of the market, while becoming the #1 retail music distributor at the expense of Walmart, Best Buy, and Amazon. Now we see the same cycle repeating itself with the iPhone.
There is no attack of the clones. These are simply recycled models with a touchscreen slapped on. Not a Multi-Touch (gesture) phone, with a Proximity Sensor and an Accelerometer (think Nintendo Wii) touchscreen, but the same-old tried kiosk touchscreen that adorns every ATM machine. Same goes for the software and services. The Symbian OS and Windows mobile are junk, along with also-ran music services. Integration is key.
What hype?
The ground break triad of integrated hardware (iPod/iPhone), software (iTunes), and services (iTunes Music Store), developed using a non-commodity based vertical model, defies everything that this industry has thrived on since the rise of the Windows PC. Slapping together hardware, software, and services developed by different companies makes for a weak user experience. The problem for iPhone competitors is not features and price, rather their entire way of doing business.
By Amber | Posted 3:58am | April 25, 2008
Steve Jobs makes me sick...
He stole the Apple Mac Interface from Zerox, stole the phone idea from HTC (Touch) and stole the iphone name from Cisco.
His supporters are brainless morons who could'nt spell 3G if there lives depended upon it.
The iphone sales are trivial in volume terms compared to Nokia, Samsung etc. I can't see apple staying in the mobile phone business for long... or the music player business either!
By Anonymous | Posted 11:43pm | May 13, 2008
Amber@ " I can't see apple staying in the mobile phone business for long... or the music player business either!"
Apple has 80% of the music player business and is the #1 music retailer over giants like Walmart and BestBuy, and yes that includes CDs sales. For 7 years now we've waited on the fable iPod killer, as Apple gobbled up the market. In contrast the Zune has 7% and most of that is a result of channel stuffing.
History is repeating it's with the iPhone which in less than a year has captured 28% of the smart-phone market running a real computer operating system. Remember, a cheap-o throw-away phone is not a smart phone, Apple isn't even in that market. The iPhone already trumps the Windows Moblie phones and Palm combined in marketshare.
It's also worth pointing out that the BlackBerry won't go 3G until after the iPhone in June 2008. So user of the most popular smart-phone apparently couldn't spell 3G either. Besides, the reason smart-phones like these with large screens have avoided 3G is due to power consumption. The phone is not worth much if you have to charge it every two hours.
That's Zerox not Zerox. Apple copied a concept and wrote their own code, unlike Microsoft who used Apple's code to build a poor copycat called Windows.
By Anonymous | Posted 11:40am | June 10, 2008
Sue, what is this column about?
"It's not the phone, it's the distribution channel. It's not the phone, it's the buzz...It was a game changing event but let's get over our love affair with the iPhone."
Huh?
Title of your column was about there being an end ot iPhone killers, none of which has, um, killed the iPhone.
This piece lacked discipline, an idea, a theme. It was blather.