iFawn: Much Ado About the Apple iPhone

Steve Jobs said that Apple decided to make the iPhone because everybody hates his/her cellphone. For a company that has built up a cult around designing the coolest gadgets that folks want, this was a new foray.The media went nuts with the coverage over Apple’s iPhone. The gushing and drooling went overboard.

What’s Cool About the iPhone?

We Americans get the crappiest phones thanks to the carriers. Here was someone who tried to set things right. Powered by Apple’s unconventional approach, a terrific design, brilliant execution and savvy marketing, the iPhone forced everybody to sit up and take notice.

It has tons of great stuff and most folks have written enough about it. Its crowning piece is undoubtedly, the software driven user interface. Apple has invested well over 200 patents to protect its efforts.

The iPhone has spurred the competition and galvanized other players into action. The latest gizmos from Nokia, Samsung and others reflect the touchscreen that the iPhone provided. Others are ramping up to come out with iPhone lookalikes. Clones of the Apple baby are supposed to be almost as good or in some cases, even better than the original.

What’s Not?

Ignoring Texting

While US lags the rest of the world in texting/SMS, it is catching up in a big way. Can the iPhone users hammer away with a single finger on the glass surface without looking at the letters? Tomi Ahonen put it bluntly that unless Apple addresses this ‘killer-app’ within six months, it is out of this game.

Locked Phones and Subscribers

The US mobile carriers love their customers too much to let them go or give them choices. Even though Apple got AT&T wrapped around its little finger in this deal, they should and could have done much more. There is enough evidence that making it easy for the customer to unlock his/her phone has worked wonders for the original providers in both Europe and Asia. It has also missed a golden chance to prevent the two-year contract for subscribers, which could have actually benefitted AT&T in the long run.

Locked API

Not for nothing, the OpenMoko’s offering is called ‘anti-iPhone’. Having an open platform and allowing all third parties to develop applications is the right way to foster growing, open and secure innovation.

Slower 2.5G Network

The claim is that it is more pervasive - ah ha, to sell more cheeseburgers. Who cares about moving to the later, better network so that the carriers can be forced to upgrade quickly and provide a better service to customers? So what if the rest of the world has moved on.

No Personalization

Even if Apple is synonymous with ‘Cool’, the lack of personalization is a drawback. Of course, bulk of the buyers lay their hands on the iPhone just to flaunt that they belong to the Apple club, and nobody dares to bring this up in the Apple context.

Battery problems

Enough has been said and written about this. The user cannot change it and it has to be sent to Apple for replacement.

Lack of Other Features

For a convergence device priced such as this, it offers a pretty poor feature-set: poor camera resolution; no video recording; no GPS, etc. Feature-to-feature, the Nokia N95 for example, beats the iPhone hands down.

Enterprise Space

The iPhone needs to work with MS (Direct Push), RIM (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) or Motorola (Good Mobile Messaging) technologies to work in the enterprise. It will have to offer enterprise-class VPN software. It is possible that Apple is coming out with a new version that addresses these issues. There’s already a hubbub about this.

While most of the above arguments apply to the US market, the arguments against Apple’s success are stronger when it comes to Europe or Asia. Compared to these markets, US lags way behind in almost every aspect and since Apple plans to introduce the iPhone to the European market by end of this year and in the highly advanced Asian market
in the first quarter of next year, its challenges are far greater to break into those markets where it has little or no foothold.

Conclusion

While I commend Apple for an excellent first attempt in this sector, could we have a more balanced view of the iPhone please?