Even to diehard Apple fans, Steve Job’s 10 million iPhones in 2008 or one per cent of the entire mobile phone market is as ambitious as it gets. Even if ten million people in the world can afford to put up $500 for an iPhone, there’s the AT&T exclusivity, which brings 56 million AT&T subscribers into the Apple iPhone market. But imagining even a tenth of a provider’s clients going over to one phone brand and one phone model is difficult. My own prediction? Why buy a product no matter how attractive when every other person on the street already has one.
Lance Davis of The Register doesn’t think of iPhone as a fashion phone, however, at least not primarily. Davis puts iPhone and future iPhone sales in the same context as other smartphones like Sony Ericsson’s P800 or RIM’s BlackBerrys, which to date sold less than ten million phones. Will iPhone get 1% of the entire mobile phone market? “It’s a bit like saying the world car market is 18 million cars so McLaren can sell 180,000 because that’s only one per cent. In practice, it sold 28 cars last year” But he admits, half a million iPhones sold is a huge success for a high-end phone. He also pointed out that Apple might have gotten AT&T onboard on a very good deal, but AT&T will most likely be a testing ground for the iPhone. “[The networks] will want everything squeaky clean and tested. Apple must get into the networks. And that means a long testing courtship. Implementing the special features, such as visual mail, is going to be uphill.
“The networks don’t like fiddling with their services. Just an hour of outage, even if it was just an hour of the SMS service dying with the messages stored and forwarded, would cost so much in lost customers it’s not worth the risk. Each customer costs about $200 to acquire and a drop in service is the best way to lose them.”
The most likely market for iPhone? “The iPhone is a video iPod with a better screen that just happens to make phone calls. Over the next few years we’ll see more mobile music devices, mobile organisers, mobile web browsers, and maybe mobile navigation devices… ” But mobile music downloads is exactly what the iPhone has missed. It’s not just the lack of 3G, it’s file compression, a custom format that seems destined for iTunes Store. “Only Apple can do this.” But they haven’t, at least not yet.
iPhone is the ultimate convergence gadget, and iPhone is going to lead the charge for all convergence gadgets. Not 2008 but maybe 2014.
[via theregister]
June 2nd, 2007 at 7:19 am
totally wrong. I think that $500 fo a phone is not all that far out. Apple Knows it is a large chink of change so they will probably be giving some king of rebate on the service. This is a revolutionary mobile phone, and I think some people are afraid of this uncharted territory.
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:45 am
you’re so wrong. the iphone will be an instant success.
June 2nd, 2007 at 9:41 am
Why do you even listen to that wanker Davis? His analysis on smart phone sales is wrong, because the iPhone doesn’t fit the normal smart phone class. Do you see any buttons on it? It is a totally new type of smart phone; previous estimates mean nothing. This is a mold breaker, and Apple will win! People will leave their networks, throw away their old phones, and make the switch!
June 2nd, 2007 at 10:15 am
Is iPhone Just a Widescreen iPod That Makes Calls?
No, It’s a mini-macbook with a phone built in.
And Yes, it is a phone and an iPod, but I think that lots of people keep missing out on the fact that it will have OSX built in, and it was confirmed recently that it is the full blown version minus a lot of data. It doesn’t have a mouse or keyboard, but it has an interface and operating system that could allow for a lot of possibilities like tablet notebooks with touch screen, stylus, voice recognition, etc.
June 2nd, 2007 at 10:49 am
You mean, the PC isn’t just a calcuator that works half the time?
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:48 pm
I don’t see Apple’s goal of 10M iPhones sold by the end of 2008 to be overly ambitious. In fact, I believe they’re being quite conservative. Word is that there will be 4M manufactured for these next six months, and I doubt that will be enough to satisfy demand in the US alone. The argument that AT&T has 60M subscribers and would require over 10% of them to buy an iPhone is a completely specious argument. This phone is going on sale in Europe and Asia starting at the end of 2007, and I can guarantee AT&T won’t be the carrier. You’re completely ignoring international sales, which will likely constitute another 40% of iPhone sales, based on Apple’s international sales ratios of its current product offerings. You can’t look at the iPhone as just a bullet-list of features. This thing is a game-changer.
June 2nd, 2007 at 1:18 pm
You just mad because you can’t buy one so your just trying to make it look like you don’t care! But you know it’s gonna be AWESOME and the BEST phone ever made! Just Admit it!
June 2nd, 2007 at 5:44 pm
“Mold breaking” ? Geesh, look what people say about iLoad (iLoad.com), the device that puts music on an iPod without a computer…selling for $300. They say “Who wants this? iPod owners already have a computer. You could buy a computer for $300″. And iLoad is definately “mold breaking”. With the iPhone, most buyers will not only already have at least one iPod but almost definately have a cell phone already and possibly with another Carrier (than AT&T). And the iPhone is 5 “Benjamins”, not 3.
I say, that when an iPod owner wants something, it usually doesn’t have anything to do with “Need”. It’s about “want”. And since the iPod is a “fashion accessory”, many people, will but this iPhone just to be seen with it. Like Field of Dreams: “Build it and they will come”.
June 2nd, 2007 at 7:24 pm
All I know is “I WANT ONE“.
June 2nd, 2007 at 7:53 pm
yo Asian! I want one, too!
June 2nd, 2007 at 10:16 pm
“The iPhone is a video iPod with a better screen that just happens to make phone calls”
Even if it was just a video iPod with a better screen that just happens to make phone calls (which it is, by the way, much more than: it is a complete internet browsing device, has visual voicemail, google integration, to mention a few things), it is still a video iPod with a great screen that makes phone calls! Davis’ critique is not even a critique at all. Regardless of how many units the iPhone actually sells, it will have a dramatic effect on the cell phone industry (though I wouldn’t say “revolutionize” just yet). I firmly believe that the recent onslaught of iPhone criticism has come from those who can’t get one.
June 3rd, 2007 at 5:40 am
For $500, a video iPod that is also a reliable cell phone would get no complaints from me.
June 3rd, 2007 at 8:47 am
I think this about says it all:
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q2.07/5E7E2BAB-C709-47BB-BD1D-E856F53C78DB.html
June 3rd, 2007 at 10:53 am
Daniel Elan makes me want to buy Apple stocks.
June 3rd, 2007 at 12:11 pm
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June 4th, 2007 at 5:02 am
it will do most of the things people do w their computers in their pocket, car, plane.
your hip grandfather will communicate completely w this thing.
i have a throwaway phonecard cell phone. this is different…
d
June 27th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
[...] Exactly what Apple wanted: months of speculation about the new device and whether it could possibly live up to its billing. Stuff like this. [...]
December 5th, 2008 at 8:22 am
with the iPhone 3G out now, I think they’ve hit the nail on the head.