iPhone: my thoughts

Everyone knows I’m excited about the iPhone. I’m not alone… I think AAPl shareholders are devoting today to a marathon bout of masturbation.

The Presentation

I watched the Quicktime streaming presentation after work and my excitement was born anew. Jobs is a good presenter, there is no question regarding that, but it’s obvious that a lot of the polish comes from hundreds of hours of practice. For example, I was pretty impressed with the synched display they had going on that interfaced with the phone. The presentation would have been leagues less effective if it had been just a cam shot of Jobs’ hands manipulating the phone. Thing is, that interface probably took months to develop. That signals what kind of time and forethought Jobs put into that presentation. Not surprisingly; Apple’s entire future has been redefined by that hour.

Features.

Before yesterday I have NEVER seen a product introduced that I couldn’t imagine being better. I can’t imagine any feature on the iPhone being better. There are probably hardware issues like larger drive and longer battery life (pretty good at 5 hours), but as for software I honestly think they hit the ball out of the park at first bat.

Some angry blogger wrote, “I’ll be keeping my Samsung A707, thanks. It’s smaller, it’s got a protected screen ”

There are a million iPod add-ons and I’ll bet the iPhone follows suite.

I’ll bet a flip-screen holder comes out before the phone hits the market. Plus, Apple has had a lot of experience with pocket-dwelling devices. There have been “scratching” issues on iPods that Apple (I believe) has addressed.

It has a mic, but nothing was mentioned about audio recording. I hope there will be.

It looks like this is a custom version of OS X. I doubt it is the whole OS. I wonder where the OS is stored? The phone comes with 4G or 8G, but does that account for installed software?

It may share a lot of the features with present smartphones, but how you combine those features can be all the difference. Modems and web sites existed before the first graphic browswer came along. Then Mosaic came out and revolutionized the web. Mosaic was simply an intuitive way of displaying information that already were right there.

This article points out some lack of features.

I think those issues will be addressed. In the case of 3G, my knowledge falls off. I don’t know exactly what it does, but I don’t know what it could do that the iPhone doesn’t provide with its regular network package. This may be a technology that Apple has deemed obsolete (like how it unapologetically moved to USB from SCSI and serial ports).

Synching.

I remember reading on Wired that what will make the iPhone useful is the synching. I agree. I’m excited to finally have a phone which will let me get pictures I take onto the computer.

The phone will sync with iTunes (as per the latest horrible post on cleansync.com), which runs on windows, so I don’t think it will be necessary to buy a PC to exploit the features of the phone. There may be some peripheral features here and there that will be Mac-only. The name “iTunes” is not the best descriptor for the software anymore. I wonder if Apple will ever rename it? If they do (which I kind of doubt), it won’t be for a while.

Financial Future

Will Apple make any money off these phones or is their main source of cash goning to be coming from a cut of the contracts with Cingular? I was thinking about that. Apple is famous for being able to command a premium price. They held out with iPods for the longest time until they released the feature-reduced shuffle. I think there is a much less likelihood that they will reduce a “shuffle” variety of iPhone. iPods are renown for the amount of profit per unit. I’m curious what (if any) profit per unit is for these babies.

Perhaps we’ll have some idea about profit-per-unit numbers when apple has its SEC filing after a few iPhones have been sold.

The overseas market for this will be huge (too bad it won’t be released in the east until 2008!) The Japanese already LOVE Apple. The iPhone will be huge in Japan.

How will Cingular Benefit?

I think a lot of people will be signing up with Cingular simply because of this phone. It will probably be a great addition to their bottom line. Why just Cingular? I’ll bet an exclusive contract allowed Apple to negotiate a much higher cut of the cellular service contracts.

Competition.

Steve very sternly promised to protect the 200+ patents they have on this device. Their may be knock-offs, but a lot of time and thought went into this product and these innovations are protected. The iPhone will be the leader in premium phones for the next five years.

AAPL Stock Price

I expect there will be some flurry of activity. Steve double underlined how much they are protecting their intellectual property with this phone which strongly implies they are going to corner the market as much as they can for their unique features. I’ll bet stock price does dip between now and the phones release, even probably after the release, but I honestly think these devices will be lust objects. When someone sees one in the wild, I expect they’ll rush to get one. This will spark a fire. These phones are priced to be premium products; not only are they cool, they are status symbols. Further, as Steve mentioned, the phones will interface with iTunes as the primary synchronization device, which runs on PC, so this is not a Mac-locked product (another good sign for market-share.)

Apple’s stock will continue to do well. If Apple achieves Steve’s goal of 10M units in 2008 (1% of the market) it will mean Apple is a whole new company. This is a new market. This is just the beginning.

Final thoughts:

This device could replace computers for many people, (especially frequent travelers.)

I’m still planning on buying one. For me the killer aps are the video, integrated phone/music and random-access voicemail. Features such as calendar, email, stock… not necessary for me at this point in my life. At present I need those features it just so happens that I am in front of a computer… 8 hours (at least) a day.

Other reading.

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2 Comments

  1. You’re all like “I can’t imagine how it could be better!” and then you go on to describe how it can be better. Comedy gold!

    Engadget had some ideas too:

    * No 3G. We know you know, but still, it hurts man.
    * No over the air iTunes Store downloads or WiFi syncing to your host machine.
    * No expandable memory.
    * No removable battery.
    * No Exchange or Office support.

  2. The Japanese may like Apple, but they like they like their 3G too, man. If you want to see a grown Japanese man scream like a little girl, try to take his 3G away from him. (I’m not implying Japanese men are any more or less likely to scream like little girls than anyone else. If you wanted bad taste, I could have said, “Try dropping an atomic bomb on him…” But I didn’t, because I am tasteful and PC.)

    As for the “scratching” issues on iPods, talk about taking a step backwards. I gave up my old 45’s and 78’s for this?

    “It has a mic, but nothing was mentioned about audio recording. I hope there will be.”

    Steve Jobs: “The iPhone also contains an audio microphone, which is nonfunctional and completely for show and prestige.”

    Brian: “This is the coolest feature I have ever seen in my life!!! I love you, Steve Jobs!!! XOXOXOX”

    “Steve double underlined how much they are protecting their intellectual property with this phone which strongly implies they are going to corner the market as much as they can for their unique features.”

    What if a rip-off artist TRIPLE-UNDERLINES that he is going to rip off the Apple design? I just don’t see double-underlining being sufficient commitment. It’s a dog-eat-dog world. From time to time I’ve seen four, five underlines. And this is to say nothing of boldface…or italics! (Or even ALL CAPS with lots of exclamation points!!!!!)

    As for 3G, it is really a bandwidth issue. There are ways to work around a lack of 3G, but some Japanese and Europeans would probably get divorces from their spouses before they would get divorces from their 3G. I’m just sayin’…

    We’ve heard about all this competition from Nokia, Motorola, Palm, RIM… But what about the competition from a No-Bake Macaroni and Cheese Recipe? What about that? That sounds delicious.

    When Steve promised very sternly to protect features with patents, I bet his eyebrows really slanted in. I can see that working great with a cartoon character of Steve.

    In summary, I have no idea what is this so called “iPhone” of which you speak, but if it has one of those cool little color LCD screens, I want one, man!

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