Smartphone makers- better wake up and smell the Applesauce
Well the long awaited iPhone 3G announcement has come and gone and the July 11th availability date will be here in just a few weeks. The pundits have analyzed its capabilities, shortcomings and torn apart the new AT&T iPhone data plan. We’ve seen the experts critique the newest iPhone on a feature by feature basis and lament the exclusion of feature X or the shortcomings of feature Y. I’m here to tell you that just like the original iPhone these shortcomings don’t matter in the overall scheme of things.
Companies that make smartphones better be shaking in their boots right now as the iPhone 3G is going to continue to change the game and in fact change it faster than the original iPhone did. Geeks can rightly point out that there are many smartphones on the market today that do more things than the iPhone and do some things better than the iPhone but I’m here to tell you that it just doesn’t matter. Apple realizes that the very small phone savvy (read geek) market segment is so small it doesn’t matter. Apple has rightly determined that the target market of the iPhone, and it hasn’t changed with the 3G model, is the mainstream consumer market that doesn’t even know what a smartphone is.
If you’re like me you’ve seen this in action. Aunt Sue comes in with her new iPhone that she picked up after she saw her friend’s and it’s "just so easy to use". This is the same Aunt Sue that hated using her regular cell phone because it was "too hard" so all she ever did with it was make phone calls. She always manually dialed them too because the address book feature was just too hard to learn. As you listen to her talk about her new iPhone and watch her show it off you realize that she already has learned how to use the iPhone address book and much more. She brags that she is amazed that she can get and send photos of her family members with email, even though she’s so intimidated with computers that she’s never used one. Which means she’s never, ever used email before. She does now on her little iPhone because it practically set itself up when she fired up the iPhone. She talks about how she now exchanges text messages with her nieces and nephews regularly because it doesn’t matter if "they answer the phone or not".
I have seen this scenario many times and it doesn’t vary much each time. This is where Apple has excelled with the simple touch interface and making the core smartphone functions of the iPhone work so easily. It doesn’t matter if we geeks find the iPhone’s functions lacking because we are not Apple’s target market. Aunt Sue is. You smartphone makers sure better understand that and think about that long and hard.
I have more than once seen iPhone users who have never been on the Internet because it’s beyond their understanding who are now happily surfing their local newspaper online, or checking out the big news on the web. I have seen these folks tell someone looking for some information that "they’ll just Google it" which is amazing given they didn’t even know what Google was a few months ago. In this regard the iPhone has been life changing for these folks which is not something that other products have done or even come close to before. The sparkle in the eyes of these people as they recount their first encounter with this technology because of the iPhone is priceless. Invariably they admit that the reason it worked for them is because they were not intimidated by the iPhone like they are with technology in general because of how simple it was to use right out of the box.
So you other smartphone makers better smell the Applesauce and get things a lot easier to use. Not for the geeks but for the Aunt Sues out there. There are many, many more Aunt Sues than there are geeks and as the iPhone 3G is launched all over the world there will be millions and millions of Aunt Sues who will be able to get their hands on one. So you’d better get that super easy to use smartphone out pretty soon and get the word out to the Aunt Sues out there or you may end up sucking wind.
why is it when i started reading this article i immediately knew who was writing it? only to skip down to the bottom & have my suspicions confirmed.
This is absolutely true of course. The biggest thing about the iPhone isn’t the iPhone itself, it is the swift sharp kick in the gonads it gave all the other phone manufacturers out there. All the Symbians and Windows Mobiles with their butt ugly, slow and hard to use interfaces that we had to accept because there was no option became old tech in one fell swoop. The 3G isn’t really any different to the original in that respect, and the game changed with the release of the first model.
Of course we’re seeing the manufacturers of those old OS:es now desperately trying to retrofit a smooth working interface onto those platforms and so far failing pretty bad, which is not surprising considering how much time and effort Apple spent on their rather revolutionary approach and the lead they still have. Coming up with something with the usability of the iPhone without simply copying it is no joke.
That’s where technology as a whole has to go, to further ease of use. Frankly, I’m well above average at administration, maintenance and usage of quite a few computing devices and there are times even I have to stop and do some figuring when doing some arcane settings in Windows and some such. That’s ok for servers and such for instance but for a home use machine it’s asinine.
That “made by tech nerds for tech nerds” attitude pervades the computers themselves. I mean, we’re expanding them by opening them up and actually inserting naked circuit boards with connectors on them and installing drivers separately, assuming we can find them. That’s mildly passable for server but for home use? There has to be a way to hide all the useless complexity and get a “games console like” ease of use without sacrificing too much configurability.
Maybe Apple will come up with that too.
James, as usual an insightful article. And brutally on the mark as well.
What do you think about the HTC models that have the FLO interface in comparison? Does it come close? Or is it better than the WM usual fare, but still off the mark?
What do you think about the Android phones we should soon be seeing? Will they match the iPhone, or will they fall short?
Inquiring minds want to know!
Woadan
I believe this is where I show my age… when you say “Aunt Sue”, I can’t help but tack on a “Great” in front of that “Aunt”. Or think of Grandma Mable. Or Grandpa Joe. Why does this matter? It’ll become apparent very, very soon.
I remember the days when you could get a $20/month cell phone plan. Sure, you’d barely get any minutes, but it was ideal for people who don’t make all that many phone calls. Then they got rid of that. Not too long ago, Cingular/AT&T cut out their $30 plan. Their cheapest monthly postpaid plan is now $40. Inflation, increased costs of doing business, financing infrastructure – whatever. If (Great) Aunt Sue use the phone any less, conventional wisdom is that she goes pre-paid. But wait! The iPhone 3G doesn’t do pre-paid, whether by minute or month! She’s forced into a TWO-year contract right off the bat. And the mandatory 3G data costs $30 a month. And that great text-messaging plan that lets her talk to her nieces and nephews even when they don’t pick up? It’s now another $5/mo at the minimum. So now, (Great) Aunt Sue has a monthly bill of $75. Before taxes and fees. When those are added in, it comes out to roughly $85, closing in on $90. Frightfully close to $100. And so we come to the question I’ve been inching towards since the start of this spiel.
How many more (Great) Aunt Sues do you know who are willing to fork over $85 each month for the wonderful, easy-to-use iPhone? How many will be willing to to overlook the not-inconsiderable bill to read their local newspapers online instead of in meatspace, to dial in phone numbers or look up numbers in their memo books? How many will swallow the hefty charges – especially during this recession, when they remember the recession of the seventies and eighties – to start Googling?
I bought the original iPhone my college senior year when it dropped to $400, unlocked it, and used it on T-Mobile (out of contract, which was 1 year) with their little-known $30 and $40/mo business plans as necessary – 300/600 minutes plus 100/500 text messages – and the $6 T-Zones data plan. After fees, $42-54. That wasn’t bad. Sold the phone in advance of WWDC and am puttering around with an HTC Wizard. AT&T’s iPhone plan was, if not great, at least somewhat palatable. But now? $85? No. Even with a decent salary, even though I’m a gadget freak, I can’t justify that cost for TWO contract enforced years, or be forced the pay an ETF if I break it.
So, I’m holding out for T-Mobile and their Android phone, hoping that they’ll remain sane with their pricing, keeping their $30 monthly plans, keeping the cost of their data plans down to differentiate from everybody else. And if they don’t? Then I guess I’ll have to be like those (Great) Aunt Sues who’ll say, “Thank you dearie, but I think I’ll manage with my regular phone.”
it’s easy to make a phone simple to use when you strip out nearly all of the “advanced” features, much like OSX itself. Apple hasnt revolutionized modern day OS’s, they simply hide most of it from the user & dont allow them to tweak it.
the Windows approach is a much more powerful complex strategy, but ultimately gives you much more control over your devices.
there is always a tradeoff to everything you do, i just think Apple receives far too much credit for essentially hiding the complexity. but this is also the reason their market penetration in the business world is so poor, the enterprise community demands the flexibility that Linux & Windows provide.
i understand James reasoning for this article, especially because of his age. but kids these days are being raised on tech, when they get older they wont be scared of using it.
although i think the iphone is very good, it still does not do the things i need.
in order of importance here they are:
exchange server- ok now
gps program wiht spoken instructions – no
sling media – no
bluetooth tethering to laptop- no
copy and past-no
entering phone nubers while on a call- no
It doesn’t really matter if a complex phone allows you to do complex things if it doesn’t do them well. I have struggled with a Windows Mobile phone for the last year and a half…it is a great device in theory, but it does so little WELL that it’s a pain in my side to use it every day. What good is a phone that is so fancy it doesn’t even make calls well?
I personally plan on switching to an iPhone when the new one comes out. I am sick of having a phone that can do everything but control the kitchen sink that has to be reset every few hours and can’t even make a quality phone connection.
What Apple has done, they’ve done it right. I’ve been raised on tech, and I’m not scared of using anything. I use all OS’es (Windows, OS X, Linux) on a regular basis. What I want is a solution that WORKS and works well. I think the iPhone is going to suit me just fine. There’s a smartphone user lost…and I’m no Aunt Sue.
There’s one thing that always strikes me about everything you read on the internet about the iPhone – it’s all written from an American perspective. Maybe the iPhone is a lot better than the competition in the US market which would explain why it’s done reasonably well over there. The rest of the world is a different matter though.
The latest iPhone may have done a bit to catch up with other phones in terms of hardware and the new pricing models are much more realistic (who the hell pays for a phone these days anyway) but Apple have a lot of catching up to do here in Europe. The first iPhone didn’t sell very well at all here in the UK. A couple of hundred thousand sales is probably similar to the number of generic Nokias that are sold each day.
I don’t generally here people complaining that mobile phones are difficult to use the way Americans do. The rest of the world also tends to use SMS a lot more than Americans do and a keypad is much easier to use for texting than a touch screen.
Anyway, we’ll soon find see if the second version does any better than the first but I wouldn’t be surprised if this remains a peculiarly American phenomenon.
Oh, one thing I forgot to mention. What’s the good of a 3G phone that can’t be tethered either wirelessly or with a cable? I wouldn’t even bother with a 3G phone if I couldn’t use it as a modem.
I still can’t get past the iPhone’s intrinsic shortcomings when it comes to eMail. My cellphone has different ring tones depending on the person. I need that same ability for eMail notification in order to be able to use the iPhone. More specifically, I need a ringtone for a specific type of work eMail, and I don’t want ringtones for any other kind.
not to be picky… but another thing i have gotton used to is the vocie command on my phone, it reads off the incoming text and emails as they arrive which allows me to grab the phon eif i think it is anything important, i never miss important calls or emails now. the others, i just wait till later to read.
i do not hate the iphone but obviously we have choices here. the other thing to mention is how much all that data is costing in europe… i see now some countries have started with data plans but the rest charge for everything! or have we forgotton all those att wireless roaming bills when the iphone first came out from people traveling overseas. the BB data is only $20 or $30 for unlimited emails anywhere in the world. you see, there are options for everyone….
James: This reminds me a lot of the usenet post you made back in the day about how the industry better wake up and start making 30 pound computer suitcases with fold down keyboards because once Granny Gertrude sees that she can have a Compaq with a … blah.
Thanks for a good run. I just realized that I get a good chuckle or head scratch from my time here more than anything else anymore. I’ll check back on my wimax iphone next year and tapo out an apology, if I can still see what I’m going through my oil stained screen.
My ears are still ringing from the days when the iTards used to tell me that Apple Macs were better than Wintel boxes because of the PowerPC inside. Then one day they had Intel CPUs too, and then THAT was why they were better. For the last year I’ve been hearing even newer and dumber iTards tell me how the iPhone didn’t need 3G, and now that it’s getting it THIS is why it now is the best phone. Apple is cool. The Mac is cool. The iphone is cool. In five years, none of this will matter, and then iTards will have something new to build up into a big wall to keep the inside in and the outside out. For this reason, Apple will always be a marginal boutique important to those that fork over the cash only.
For a long time, Apple hardware was the best, and for even longer the software was. Especially in the beginning. Everybody knows that the better product didn’t win in the Apple Microsoft war, and it rarely does. If anything, this may be the only reason why the iphone has a shot.
I watch a lot of sports. I expect that the pundits come out this week to tell me why and how the obvious team will win this week. When the obvious team instead loses, I also expect those same pundits to come out and tell me why and how they lost. The pundits are not going to be consistent if you try to string what they say from week to week into some sort of principled position. That’s not their job. Their job is to make comments in the moment. However, making observations about the current moment sound authoritative is about the dumbest thing that anybody can do as a matter of regular behavior. In fact, the ONLY reason that these pundits do it is because it’s their job. If there weren’t geniuses out there who mistakenly thought that there was a need for multiple 24 hour sports channels on TV then we wouldn’t need pundits filling up the air with day to day and week to week flip-flopping. You see James, they have to fill the time.
I still cannot believe how Apple, having never made a phone before, completely showed-up all those other loser engineers who spent their entire careers making crappy phones. LOL
The reason the iPhone has endless room for application growth and will only get stronger and stronger is because of Jobs’ choice to use Unix instead of less-capable OSes already out there. Unix will eventually dominate this sector. Unix is the greatest OS of all-time. It runs on every computer ever made. Even cheap clones like Linux cannot make this claim.
I kept on waiting to read “this post is brought to you by Apple”, but alas…
Lots of interesting responses which I suspected. I like how if you write about Apple products you are instantly either biased or deluded. Even though my article didn’t say anything about the worth of the iPhone nor about what I think about the iPhone.
Do I think that the newest HTC touch interfaces are as good as the iPhone interface? I wouldn’t answer that myself because as the article stated it really doesn’t matter what I think, I’m not the target audience which is what this article WAS about. That said, I often put devices to the “Aunt Sue” test, or in my case the elderly Mom test. She’s still overwhelmed by those fancy add-on touch interfaces but has no problems picking up the iPod Touch and using it. No intimidation there.
And please, smartphone manufactures, don’t leave us geeks out by slashing features! I’m quite frustrated with what Apple’s doing with the 3G iPhone…
I’ll be writing about it soon.
Another great article!
As you noted, it is always amazing the response that you get from people when an article is posted about an Apple product. Most the time, they seem to comment (good or bad) before even taking time to read and understand the article.
JK, Aunt Sue can’t afford the $70 month plans for iPhone. Even if she could, she would never pay that. It’s absolutely ridiculous amount of money for her. She can’t even stand paying the $30~40/month for her regular phone.
iPhone is just another smartphone, hampered by smartphone business model. Aunt Sue is out of that picture.
Wake me up when Apple can sell it for $199 without the standard subsidizing business model of smartphones.
bah all the little sheep will follow the Shepperd to the pen so they can be shred
baah
i suspect that some of this ease of use comes from the lack of “soft-keys/buttons”. you know, those little buttons that sit under the screen and change function based on whats written in the bottom corners of the screen.
why i say this? i have seen my dad have a hard time doing the mental connect between those buttons and whats written on the screen.
number and green phone to call a number, sure. red phone to hang up, ok. that button marked with a book to look up stored numbers, got it. but not using those soft keys to go any deeper into the phone.
so yes, a interface like the iphones, where the buttons are right there and labeled, will be easier. hell, its what we are used to in real life most of the time. one physical button, one physical effect.
its just that no smartphone had to do that jump as no smartphone was sold towards the avarage user.
hell, if the iphone didnt run a osx variant under the hood that almost looks like it was made to be jailbroken (i cant shake the feel that apple planned it, but it may just be my paranoia kicking in), it would not even be a smartphone. just a feature phone with a clever interface, thanks to it being a feature phone with a touch screen rather then a numbers pad.
as for setting up mail on the iphone, remind me again how many webmail services that it comes preconfigured for? i suspect that aunt sue has a preexisting account with gmail or yahoo mail? but what if she use some isp delivered account? im guessing she still would have to key in stuff like server address and stuff…
so all in all, anything is easy, when you stay within the designed for you box…
Aunt Sue adds to the total cost of ownership iPhones for techno-phobes a shiny new computer to sync to iTunes and learn how to update the frequent updates and phone firmwares.
Techno-phobes with iPhones soon become update junkies or lean on the suggester to follow through with support.
Even uncle Bob with his Win98 or OS9 iMac perfectly suitable for web and email needs dump that for computer recent enough to run iTunes and sync as package deal.
My aunt Sue covets those intentionally bulky phones with giant buttons sold on tv for the tri-focal crowd. These elders so happy with iPhone must have uncommonly good small detail closeup vision and be free of arthritis making interaction younger fingers the true target market have no trouble with.
Imagine the anxiety the techno-phobe feels if Update totally hoses that shiny new computer bought to link phone. It does happen as seen right here, and should never be forgotten risk of high tech.
Who supports the buyer of high tech phone when something goes south they have no clue even the simplest issue what to do about.
Everyone would see trouble coming for techno-phobe buying feature-laden WM6 phone. The iPhone locks up too and needs backup restores. What is second nature for the tech-savvy can freak out those with none at all. They shouldn’t take on ANY high-end phone and stay with basics unless prepared to deal with inevitable issues. Unlike the vast majority of phones, Apple regularly uses updates to add features or keep iTunes current. That process terrifies most new to computers.
James, I know this is your (and Kevin’s) site, so you’re free to say whatever you want, but personally I think your response is a little unfair to me at the very least. I think the high monthly fees for the iPhone (and all smartphones in general, as opposed to most featurephones and dumbphones) is a legitimate issue. When it comes to wireless data at least, it seems to me that some sort of Google Text Ad-subsidized device (perhaps when it’s in standby, a small OLED screen on the back/exterior of the phone would discreetly display G-rated ads?)
Actually all points about cost and other stuff is completely off the topic and are in my opinion quite irrelevant. Those are a matter of policy and pricing and other such external factors. In the grand scheme of things iPhone, yeah they matter, but that is not James point.
The point is not what features are missing in the iPhone either, or what needs to be added.
The point is that the iPhone is incredibly easy to use, is very responsive in use and doesn’t make you wait, and is just a very very polished experience all round.
Windows Mobile even with Flo is still a mess, inadequately hidden. It’s not even on the same planet when it comes to usability, design and reliability.
The iPhone user interface is revolutionary and legitimately game-changing. The other stuff brought up about the whole iPhone experience, missing features and blah blah blah are missing the point here.
And that from a guy who has never yet owned an iPhone and is currently a Windows Mobile user.
Your absolutely right, the same thing is happening again like the ipod “mega ease of use scenario” even though ipods arent the best sounding devices out there, average joe isnt concerned about amazing sound quality mp3 players. Ease of use is the key for the mass market.
The only thing Apple are doing wrong with their Macs is the lack of gaming imo. Get the same games as windows users and ill buy a 24″ mac in a heartbeat.
hm..as somebody said, ask aunt sue how happy she is when she gets the bill to pay??
i find it ridiculous to say that other manufacturers do not have the “smell” for mainstream. all manufacturer will create the perfect phone if it costs 1500 USD!
did Apple pay you for this ad?
I thought I’d put it to the test. I don’t have an Aunt Sue (pity, because she sounds hot) but I do have some run-of-the-mill women (1 still uses a 5yo Nokia that only makes calls and do SMS, the other hates me for forcing her to use my old K800i so I can send her MMS’s).
While they were quite impressed with what the iphone seems to offer they were completely turned off when I told them not only would they have to pay at least 3k kroner for the phone but they wouldn’t be able to keep their 5 dollar a month equivalent mobile rental charge. As a previous poster wrote, they both said they’ll keep with their present phones, thank you very much.
bmhome1, Apple uses iTunes to update the iPod about as often as they use it to update the iPhone. The iPod is incredibly popular. Few if anyone harbors worries about updating their iPod. You’re saying this process “terrifies” them when it updates the iPhone, even though they’re used to it, and it works for them, for the iPod?
If I read the blog posts correctly, the most common cause of update failure on the iPhone is when people jailbreak them. If your aunt Sue is so technophobic, we can assume she won’t have jailbroken her phone.
[Obviously, I'm not saying that every update ever made on every Apple computer or iPhone in the world has gone perfectly smoothly. It just has to go smoothly so frequently that we perceive it as non-problematic. I simply don't see the angst among Apple or iPhone owners about updates]
fab: Why is it that people add the cost of the calling plan to the phone only when they talk about the iPhone? By that reckoning, excepting pay as you go plans (they don’t seem very aunt Sue to me), is there any phone in the US which doesn’t cost at least $1000? (ATT’s $30/month add-on for unlimited internet is actually the cheapest I know of in the country.)
John in Norway: Has someone announced pricing and rate information for Norway already? I must have missed it. Can you please add a comment with a link? Thanks.
I think we need to distinguish the “iphone 3g bashing” to what is attributable to Apple and to AT&T. Some of the issues related to the phone (lack of features, etc) are clearly in Apple land. However, I think most of the complaints (locked, expensive plans, expensive roaming) have to do with the AT&T plans, which are terribly expensive and do not provide the customer/consumer with the kind of flexibility that is desirable for a product like the iPhone. The exclusive association with AT&T really takes away many of the fine aspects of the iPhone (original and 3G).
I’ve been a WM phone user since Siemens SX56 and have had easily 15 phones since, Palm, Kyocera, Smartphones and lots of WM, which I love. (Tilt now)..but I’m absolutely going to a 30 day trial because it now has the features I want: Exchange and 3G. It appears to be an amazing phone. While I’ve had so many WM phones and I like all the add ons, spending money at Handango gets to be quite pricey. Plus I’m SICK of all the hard resets. Tried to make a call yesterday for 10 mintues and got “Operation Failed”.. WTF? What if it was an emergency??? Aunt Sue’s are NOT going to want this phone. “Wanna-be” ‘followers’ ARE. Those are people that buy things because ‘everyone else has it’, or ‘it’s the cool thing’.
I moved to South Beach in 1991, LONG BEFORE it was the hip spot it is now. It still cracks me up to see all the ‘wanna bees’ think their ‘hot’ because they come down to Miami!! HAHAHA! You can immediately tell a loser wanna bee… they try so hard to be ‘in’… this is the mainstream that will be buying this phone. Geeks will love it, (I’m sure I will, but I’m a geek)… but it will appeal to all because they think ‘it’s cool’.
There will be TONS and TONS of people buying this phone because it’s the ‘fad’.. not the Aunt Sues. (if you’re profile of an Aunt Sue is what I’m thinking). Apple is capitalizing on marketing to the masses. “Aunt Sues” just want a phone.
If your Aunt Sue is anything like my mother (67yo), or my Aunt Marian, Aunt Rose, Aunt Kay (all 68+), they have no interest in this phone. Heck, I’m only 45 and I have trouble reading my Tilt sometimes, I can’t see my Aunt Marian or mother trying to read that screen!!
They are marketing to the mainstream, “tech, fashion, cool wanna bees”… and yes, I’d say the age range can be teens to mid 50s.. but after than… a plain old phone will do.
I think a majority of you guys are taking the Aunt Sue example a bit too literal. When some of you hear Aunt Sue you pigeon toe a certain demographic. I believe what James was alluding too was the non-tech demographic out there. This doesn’t just include middle to senior aged individuals living on a fixed income. That would be a bit disingenuous on your part. There is a large demographic out there that encompasses multiple social and economic sub categories that would fall into the target audience of the iPhone. These are people of varying education, social, and financial status. The one thing they do have in common is the desire to have seamless access to their data in a mobile environment. That data can be as simple as a contact list of their loved ones or pictures of their children or far more powerful such as access to their corporate intranet via VPN. Of course these tasks can be accomplished by many devices which have been available for years, but they don’t do it simply or elegantly. They just don’t.
You have to think of the iPhone as a commodity or consumer level device. You turn it on and you use it just like a TV, DVD player, or stereo. It gets the job done and it doesn’t get in the way of the real task at hand.
One killer feature that the IPhone has over all others is memory. It was true even when people were complaining that it “only” had 4 or 8 GB and no expansion slot. Windows-based smartphones simply cannot compare.
When installing applications on my Windows smartphone, I need to be careful to choose the memory card as the destination. Likewise, I direct any application I can to use the memory card for data, even though the application vendors recommend against it because of performance problems (sorry, you can’t all go in device memory).
Yet I constantly receive “almost out of memory” errors with corresponding performance and stability issues, while my memory card remains virtually empty.
People may complain that not providing a card slot is an example of Apple sacrificing functionality for ease of use. The reality is that the majority of smartphones are crippled by a pitiful amount of money, done to keep costs low, and that the card slot is a means to mask this deficiency.
I gotta tell you, I wasn’t a big fan of the first iphone. It felt like jumping on a beta bandwagon too much.
But lately I have been really leaning towards the 3g iphone. I am a diehard WM user, I’ve been using WM as a phone device since before any WM phones existed (CF data card and hacked phone), and using PocketPC devices long before that, and Palm before even that.
What really really got me was the HTC Diamond. Gorgeous phone, tiny, VGA resolution, HTC touch interface, what’s not to like? I was all ready to buy one when it came out and tweak my nose at all the iphone users who didn’t have the functions I had. But then I really started thinking about it and comparing features and functions. I’m a diehard WM user, BUT I am also open to reason and open to change.
I started thinking about how the HTC interface was still on top of WM6.1, and how Microsoft hadn’t significantly changed the OS, well ever, it was still that tired old hunt and peck OS. Top that with the fact that many early reviewers are reporting that the Diamond’s interface is slow, with lag between functions and screens. I know only too well how slow WM can be, and even that much worse with the HTC interface thrown over it. I just can’t describe how many phones I’ve had that have that lag, or don’t turn off the right way, or turn on in my pocket, or don’t hang up when I press the end button, or etc etc ad nauseum.
And that’s my bottom line, Microsoft are the ones pushing me to the 3g iphone. It’s a shame because they could have ruled the smartphone world very easily, but instead chose to keep their extremely outdated slow OS even after Blackberry, even after the first iphone, and I’m sure even after Android. I see Apple updates the iphone OS regularly, with this incredible 2.0 upgrade which pretty much changes a lot of core functions. Meanwhile Moguls users are just getting a tiny update which was years overdue, 6700 owners are still shafted, and I’ll be damned if I believe the faint rumors that my Vogue *might* be updated soon.
I’m impressed with Apple, and severely disappointed in Microsoft, and that’s from a diehard windows vista, windows mobile, etc. user. I think I’m going to give the 3g iphone a spin. The only thing holding me back is the phenomenal plans, coverage and customer service with Sprint. Hopefully ATT will be able to match up.
I agree with Jake. The iPhone is great but it largely a US story due to a lagging market there.
I was on holiday at the weekend in Holland and the amount of people using video and flash photos on mobile phones now is amazing. I saw one girl with an iphone and most of the rest of the people were carrying Nokias. Nokia are selling something close to a million S60-based phones every week. If Nokia can simplify the UI, improve the browser and maintain the high quality high on photography, media, navigation and video, the iPhone may never be a success story outside the US.
Il be interested to see how apple compete in T9 countries (most of Asia!)
Jobs has done a great job with a great phone but global perspective is missing from most of the media coverage it gets which makes it appear to be more successful than it is.
Chippy
I’m another long time WM user and I’m seriously looking at the 3G iphone. Why? Because after carefully looking at what I do with my mobile devices MOST of the time (say90%), the iphone will do them quicker and more easily all of the time. I was just waiting for the GPS. Even with mobile shell and opera I’m still going to have to miss hit those tiny, tiny x’s to close an application. I’m still going to have to reboot every other day. And I’m still carrying an ipod touch because of the screen and ease of interacting with the itunes store. I love the features of my WM device but I can’t stand the frustration of not having them work ALL the time. I just don’t need to waste my time fighting my device. I’ve never had that feeling with an ipod.
WinMo has failed as a consumer, wide adoption platform because it has tried to do everything and made it self too complicated for the average consumer. That is why WinMo never took off in the consumer space. Most people don’t care what it can do if it’s too hard to do it.
Windows Mobile is an enterprise leaning platform (which ironically has been trumped by the Blackberry platform which has far less apps available) and the iphone is a consumer leaning platform. Sure the 5% of hard core users that need some specialised undocumented enterprise function are never going to buy an iphone but the iphone has a target audience of about 70% of the population. YOu know. The one who read emails, surf the net, listen to music and make phone calls.
I’m also no Mac fanboy. I haven’t seen anything compelling in the Mac laptops etc. I actually like Vista, but WinMo is just agravating.
The iphone has not revolutionised what a device can do, it has revolutionised how the end user interacts with it. Look at HTC, Samsung, et al, as they all of a sudden “discover” how to better use a touch interface. The may be fewer apps for the iphone (but not for long) but the ones that are there are simple to access, simple to use and do exactly what you expect them to.
My 78 year old father will probably get an iphone. He is some one who can’t read an sms on his current mobile, but could read emails on my ipod touch in about 2 minutes. I doubt he’ll ever put a single song or video on it either.
Like Adam, I have had a plethora of phones and PDAs, both Palm and WM. I think the fanboys of both persuasions are missing the point that James is making: THE TYPICAL SMARTPHONE IN THE US SUCKS!!! That is it in a nutshell. I don’t care how much technology there is beneath the hood, they are just a royal PITA to use. There is an indentation in my vehicle’s dashboard that looks just like the edge of my old Samsung i730. I HATED that phone. Now I have the VX6800 (HTC Titan) and it is better, but it still freezes up. The camera sucks. Syncing sucks. All of those little buttons around the phone suck. Verizon removed the GPS, so that sucks, too. About the only thing that is really good is Outlook with Active Sync. That is worth the price of admission for me. Everything else about this phone (or any WM phone) requires a good bit of love to even use it.
Question: Why does it always take Apple to figure this stuff out? No, I am NOT an Apple fanboy and I think Steve Jobs is an arogant @#$%! but he sure brings the best out in his products and his engineering.
I will get an iPhone this summer as soon as the ability to sync with MS Exchange works. I just don’t think that anyone else but Apple really gets it, or they are just too scared to try something revolutionary (and cool.)
chippy made me wonder, are symbian based phones sold at all in USA?
i see a lot of talk about windows mobile based devices here, and comparing those to the iphone. but what about symbian ones?
hrmf, maybe i should be surprised. snyericsson have maybe a couple of models using symbian. and i dont recall engadget ever writing that one of them where coming to a US operator. and nokia, the single biggest supplier of symbian based devices is not seen much in the US from what i understand.
well i guess there is always the motorola Z8 and Z10. but again i dont know their availability in USA.
im guessing that leaves HTC and palm, and both of those use windows mobile (except when palm use garnet).
if this is true, then indeed does the US market for smartphones stink…
i should have done what i just did before sending of that comment.
basically i went to gsmarena.com, keyed in the gsm bands that is usable in USA, told it to find all the symbian based devices that supported those and got a interesting list…
1 sonyericsson, 2 motorola, and the rest nokia…
if i went umts, it was all nokia, and not many at that.
the US market for smartphones do indeed suck…
James, the reason everyone acts like you are deluded on this topic, is because we already heard all of these arguments when the first iPhone came out. Here we are a year later, and from all the hype when the first one came out RIM, HTC, Palm and Nokia should have all been out of business, and Apple was going to have 90% of the smartphone market, because the iPhone was so much more advanced than any product mankind had ever produced. Instead, RIM has increased their share of the smartphone market, Nokia is doing better than ever, HTC is a more recognized mainstream brand than it was a year ago, and the iPhone utterly failed to grow the smartphone market a single unit, and in fact isn’t even selling as well as Apple had projected. If anything, all the hype for the iPhone has been HELPING the sales of the more established smartphone manufacturers, because their phones compare so favorably to the iPhone.
Given that situation, many of us feel that predictions that THIS time, the second launch of the iPhone, this time with some of the features any modern smartphone should have had a year ago, is somehow REALLY going to revolutionize the industry, and prove a huge challenge for all those companies it didn’t really prove that big a challenge for last time, can’t be seen as anything more than the wishful thinking of a fan who WANTS that be true, because he is rooting for his team.
Many of us have spent pretty much our entire adult lives hearing how if you just wait for the next version of this Apple product or that Apple product, they will put the competition out of business, because it is so much better, and in all those years, Apple has had exactly one mainstream success, the iPod. All the other “successes” involve moving the goalposts more often than the Clinton campaign. The proof isn’t in the prognostications of bloggers, it is in the marketplace, and in the marketplace, all the companies, like RIM, who said the iPhone posed absolutely no threat to their business, have been right, despite all the hype, and despite how many pop idols Apple gets to flash their phones on TV.
There is no rational reason to think it is going to be any different with the new version, especially since the very core of your argument is that the people the iPhone is supposed to appeal to, are exactly the kind of people who don’t care about features like 3G, app support, technical features and Exchange sync, so why would they have been holding off for a year already? To wait for features they don’t care about?
Not so. I am specifically an example of someone who waited a year for the applications, GPS, exchange and 3G. Those were the things I said I would switch to the iphone for.
Yes you can do more with WinMo, but at the same time there’s some excellent stuff application wise that is coming down the pike for the iphone, I’m sure they will have VPN, slingbox, etc soon enough.
Also think about the graphics processor on the iphone. Besides being a better video player fromwhat I’ve heard it plays real games with real graphics.
It’s not that the iphone is necessarily better than WinMo, it’s that it’s polished, finished, updated. I wish I could have one day to meet with the WinMo team and slap them upside the head and ask them how they could possibly be so incredibly shortsighted and non reactionary to the market forces around them as they lose more market share to blackberry, iphone, etc etc.
Indeed one big reason RIM has been doing so well in the corporate space is the push email.
Having a calendar on a phone is worse than useless unless that calendar is a connected one. If changes propagate both ways with no hands on required, the phone becomes an extension of your work calendar and highly useful right off the bat.
Same goes for Email – IMAP is great, but having a no muss, no fuss two way communication going 24/7 is a requirement in an Enterprise device.
Again, we’re discussing off topic here assuming the topic was that the iPhone user experience was game changing, but one can’t ignore that they added features that really gives the iPhone a chance to transform itself from a closed and standalone device to an open and connected one. New apps, that will be quality controlled, easily downloadable is a big deal. The syncing features is also.
James is absolutely right. Do you know how much work it takes the average geek to tweak out an HTC 6800 to do anything remotely cool? More time than a pedestrian smartphone newbie would care to spend. But wait the iPhone by itself blows away any smartphone out of the water. Now with the Apple developement kit millions of developers will write cool tweaks and addons to sell at the Applestore where all the Aunt Sue’s and idiot users of the world will have all the cool tweaks and adons putting them on par with the average smartphone geek. Why will people buy into it because installing the apps will be just as easy as it is on a Mac. No stinking registry or cab file to build a easy trip to the Applestore on the phone for the impulse buy that happens instantaneously with 3G! I take that back James got it partially right. Not only is it 3G but also the whole easy to impulse buy/install apps ecosystem that is built around the iPhone that will blow away the competition.
>>>It doesn’t matter if we geeks find the iPhone’s functions lacking because we are not Apple’s target market. Aunt Sue is.
Baloney.
Show me what NORMAL person looks at something and says, “You know, this is just too easy to use. Let’s eff it all up and make it frustrating!”
Maybe semi-autistic programmers do that, but well before computers came along, industrial designers designed for Ease Of Use.
Even Microsoft nearly caught on to that by having the Start button in Windows. But then they became all autistic and complexified everything up once again.
I was just thinking about all this, this morning. Now that you’ve reminded me, I’m going to make it a blog post.
Did my post:
http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/06/16/a-gadget-too-far/
We have your wonderful Ambassador for all things one-eyed and home-spun in London at the moment.
Now I did think that perhaps Dubya, who despite being one of the most powerful people on earth probably couldn’t find any other country except the US of A on a map, was the exception, but now I am not so sure.
Because that is right, there ARE only two Smartphone OS makers in the world. Microsoft and Apple. Because they are US based, right. Forget RIM, forget Symbian, pinko liberal rubbish
Who cares if the Nokia N95 sold 10 million units. All Ruskies anyway.
And because the iPhone is smarter as a phone than WinMo (which it clearly is, although WinMo perhaps makes a better PDA OS) we can ignore anything else ?
C’mon guys, you are read the world over. We DO have decent 3G coverage and have had it for years. Nokias sell by the tanker load here, why ? Because they give the ordinary Joes what they want. Buttons to text people as you walk along or one handed on a wobbly train – try that on a Touch Diamond or an iPhone.
The iPhone is fabulous niche product. A fabulously EXPENSIVE niche product. Be happy with that.
Declaring Apple the winner in the Smartphone race, when they haven’t even got into their silky running shorts yet … is just blinkered.
It is better race for Apple being in it to be sure. It provides such a fillip to the market sapce. But are Nokia et al really going to be worried ? Or should Apple be waking up and smelling the herring ?
Nigel, who has declared anyone the winner of anything? The article clearly states that smartphone makers should be watching what Apple is doing. I firmly believe that and don’t even own an iPhone. There’s no hidden agenda here as some seem to think.
No hidden agenda suggestions from me. I just think it is a case of “Acting Global, thinking Local” for a change !
As with most of the above comments, and the tone of the piece, this is a WinMo vs iPhone Smartphone discussion, not a global smartphone discussion. Perhaps an HTC vs iPhone discussion.
Yeah, MS dropped the ball. Well, they never really had the ball. But Apple don’t have the ball either. Symbian does. And has done so for quite some time. And a year of the iPhone hasn’t really changed that. People seem to think MS are the competition in the Smartphone market, which must make Symbian chuckle.
Will the new Nokia N96 be “better” than the iPhone, probably not. Will it outsell it globally ? Probably.
Aunt Sue might like the iPhone, but European Aunt Sue will look at the cost, and wonder why she has to pay for a phone for the first time in her life and probably pass. Perhaps reluctantly.
I do hope Nokia and HTC and the others take note of what Apple are doing. It is better for us all.
But I suspect they are also looking at their Sales figures and balance sheets and having Balmer-esque thoughts about being happy with what they are doing.
Declaring the winner (it was a more general comment rather that pointed at anyone in particular) when the competitors are not even on the course yet seems a little premature. It is an emerging market.
Does Nigel work for Nokia? Is his livelihood somehow tied to Nokia?
Dust off that resume, pal.
http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/05/09/the-end-of-finland/
About 50% of US adults (or about 70 million subscribers) have broadband in their homes, at a hefty cost of $40 or more. Of that 50%, maybe 5-10% are the geeks. The other 40-45% are the ones that JK is talking about.
The lowered entry price (whether real or not) and promise of more capability will entice a portion of this group to make the leap to mobile data in the next 3-6 months. And then more will come in when they finally see what the many App Store apps, or the Mobile me services will do for them.
Work for Nokia ? Hmm, unless they have an Insurance division in the City of London I am unlikely to ever work for them
I don’t even have a Nokia phone, although I bought an N800 (£125 was a bargain) for a giggle. Mainly to annoy Linux people. I also have an Toshiba M400 tablet, a Q1U, an Apple Newton and am considering the HTC X7510 PDA and 3G iPhone combo – so am pretty much target audience foo JKOTR !
Only used Nokia as an example because they sell more Smartphones using the market leading (by miles) Smartphone OS, Symbian. The N95 outsold the iPhone quite easily, it isn’t really my cup of Vodka, but it IS easy to use.
The iPhone may well tempt people like me away from their HTC WinMo bricks. It is finally usable as a business device.
But will it crack the Symbian consumer market ? Will people pay SUCH a large amount (the cheaper O2 contract in the UK is pretty laughable in terms of the minutes/texts) for usabilty ?
What I see so far is it being bought as an iPod/Phone covergence device. Which it is perfect for, but the market is much smaller than for phones. Perhaps that is why it sold well, but not spectacularly.
At $199 I wouldn’t call this product expensive. What the data plan rates are though … that’s expensive!