How Big Will the iPhone Become? 388
palewook writes "Combine the best elements of an iPod with a BlackBerry's addictive usefulness, and you may just get Apple's Next Big Thing. Around 2009, when the lower cost version of iPhone appears, Business Week believes the yearly market for iPhones could be over 10 billion dollars a year. Its an interesting prediction; if those numbers come to pass, iPhone could become a bigger source of revenue than the traditional iPod. 'The answer may not come until 2009. By then, Apple should have begun creating lower-cost iPhone variants to reach consumers scared off by the introductory $499 price. It also will probably have moved into overseas markets and cut deals with more carriers to utilize higher-speed wireless networks. So while most analysts look for Apple to sell around 3 million units this year and 10 to 12 million in 2008, many figure that 20 million will move in 2009.'"
iPhone (Score:0, Insightful)
Predictions (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't see the allure.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't see the allure.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Please get a bluetooth headset and a phone with good voice dialing if and only if you must talk on the phone while driving.
Heck if the IPhone stops people from using their cell while driving it may save thousands of lives!
Focus (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Predictions (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a good point. I really like Apple and have never been let down by their hardware but it's way too early to be making crazy predictions about the Iphone saving the world. Competitors are genuinely scared though, Microsoft had that FUD piece a while back about the Iphone being useless for business. I found that funny given the fact that the ipod is useless for business as well yet was still a success.
Overall I have no doubt the Iphone will do well but it's too early to make predictions 2 years down the road.
Battery life will kill it, hands down (Score:3, Insightful)
Just my 2 cents, I think its a great device otherwise, but great devices with no power are pretty much expensive bricks.
How good are the others at playing catch up? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Big enough for Mum to use? (Score:5, Insightful)
I see the target for the IPhone to be the Treo and Blackberry crowd. I really want to see one and the SDK. I hate AT&T and I am still trying to figure out why Apple went with them. The only thing I can figure out is that Apple made a deal about using AT&Ts pipes if net neutrality goes south.
I am going ready for a new phone in November and the IPhone is tempting if I can do development on it. It could be a great market to get into.
It might struggle in Europe (Score:3, Insightful)
It won't be the number sold that counts (Score:5, Insightful)
It will be reliability. This isn't an iPod; you're iPod breaks and so you can't listen to music or watch videos, that's a shame. But people are wedded to their mobile phones -- if these things can't stand up to the pounding that a normal mobile phone takes in the course of a day, you're going to see sales tail off pretty damned fast.
Re:iPhone (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Big enough for Mum to use? (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO... (Score:5, Insightful)
...I don't think the iPhone is going to be big at all.
The ipod was/is huge becuase it was a relatively early entrant in a market that was just on the verge of exploding in size, and it was hugely advertised and hyped, and there wasn't any real competition for at least a couple of years. The tie-in with iTunes helped too.
The mobile phone market is completely different to this. Completely. There is an enormous existing market which has already been through most of its rapid-growth phase. There are huge, competent companies churning out amazingly sophisticated models of all types (just this quarter, the SonyEricsson W880 and the Nokia N95 are great examples), and they are refreshing those models at a furious pace.
The mobile markets differ around the world, but the Western European model essentially removes the purchase price from the end-user. I haven't paid more than $100 US for a new phone in eight years, and I'm a technophile who upgrades every year, ususally to a high-end just-released model.
Apple have no experience at making phones. They make stuff which can be good to use, but that's hard in the phone world. Above all, phones have to be good phones first, then be good ipods, then have other stuff they do well. My SonyEricsson W850 is a very good phone, a great walkman, and also lets me browse the Internet at broadband speeds in a decent way, has good Java games available, a decent-enough camera, a torch, alarm clock and so on. It's very hard to get right the phone bit, and nothign of what I've read about the iPhone tells me it'll be any good at that. It's not 3G which rules it out for many technophiles including myself, too.
Apple might talk about a low-cost verion in 2009, but the others will have cheaper phones that do far more in 2007, let alone 2008 or 2009.
They might be moderately successful in a niche in the USA, (and in the mobile pheon world, the US is a niche), but I cannot see it becoming widely successful elsewhere. I might be wrong - it might have a neat feature that'll make it a must-have - but I'll be very surprised if they do - and the second it's out, the competitors will be throwing together better competing phones.
Re:Predictions (Score:5, Insightful)
If the iPhone can't do that, ultimately it will be relegated to a vanity toy.
Think about it - I know a bunch of people who are totally addicted their crackberries, will they really switch to the iPhone? Does the iPhone provide enough value to convince them to ditch their crackberry given that they'll lose 24x7 access to their email?
If the iPhone can't sync with corporate email systems seamlessly, then it's going to become a vanity toy and not the powerhouse that Apple (and the Apple fanboys) want it to be.
Re:from Apple.com (Score:5, Insightful)
the iphone has one potential dealbreaker for me and that is the lack of buttons. texting outstrips voice by orders of magnitude - for a long time abroad (Europe, for example) and a bit more recently in the US. quick and effective texting on my motorola Q now means i can text without looking at the keys - as tactile response allows me to fly over the keypad. i don't have to wait for visual confirmation of a keystroke to continue texting.
the sidekick was popular with teens a couple of years ago for this very reason. It was one of the first phones to relatively inexpensively offer qwerty and seamless communications packages for texting, email, and IM. it didn't matter that the form factor was less than aesthetically pleasing, it mattered that the phone allowed you to communicate quickly and simply, and it also matter that providers soon offered a prepaid service that allowed teens to get the phone and buy minutes/data.
if this screen is somehow at least as tactile and responsive as keys are on a phone pad - then the iphone will dominate communications because apple understands how to woo consumers. this is clearly not a business device, so they need to dominate the consumer market. teens drive a lot of the consumer market and teens text more than they speak (let me expound: by teens i more aptly mean 13-24 market). at an unsubsidized $500, this might be a little high for this market, so apple might have to come downmarket fast. what's interesting here is that the fashion industry does this with runway lines - so called couture. those items are unrealistic for street wear and ridiculously priced - but that drives interest for the "ready to wear" stuff that shows up at your local department store.
the other issue that is interesting to me is that the phone can be used as a vanity phone. if usability is an issue - then people will want to have one, but have a more functional phone on hand for day to day and keep the iphone around when trolling for the ladies. so even if usability suffers you might see significant sales because it will be the it phone to have, even if for show. working in media, there are plenty of film execs who have blackberries but are totally unable to use them, but have them because this is the accessory a film producer is expected to have. so they carry it around and have an assistant check emails, etc.
-third part software is not an issue to the average user.
-battery life might be an issue to the average user, but it will not prevent him/her from buying the product.
-3g vs 2.5g, etc. this is also not an issue to the average user. they do not care about this. as long as it works - users are familiar with and expect slower bandwidth time on a handheld.
the average user is concerned with the following more than likely:
-does it look hot? will this make me look cooler? (CHECK)
-does it work? (?????) this is where the texting comes in. Your average user might say: "It's cool but texting on it makes me frustrated because i have to get used to doing it a new way" (this is important because at $500 you don't get downmarket uptake by the people most likely not to bristle at the new interface - kids/tweens/teens) - or - "It's too slow to text on this thing."
the ipod function will not get used because it will kill battery life. i don't think the average user wants all/a portion of his music collection on his phone anyway. the audience is simply not that interested in that kind of convergence. it increases complexity and the market doesn't want that.
Re:My opinion. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It will bomb (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, it was way too expensive then, and I knew it. Thing was, it blew away my Rio Diamond; it also blew away the 6 CD changer in my lexus that I had spent $3K on.
I knew then it would be huge, and I bought apple stock at $14. I think that was around 2001. It took a couple of years for APPL to get some traction, but today is at $127.
Apple sees long term better than most tech companies today, in my opinion. The iPhone will take off just like the iPod did.
Anyways
Network compatibilities? (Score:2, Insightful)
The best solution IMO, is for them to build in the hardware for all the major networks into the device (which ought to be possible). I'd buy a phone just for that capability. Then perhaps you can have phone usage on one network and data plans on another.
Alternatively, akin to something I am considering, one could buy a phone with 3Gness and run a VoIP service or Skype on it 24/7 and thereby use it as a phone... If the iPhone manages that, who knows...
Cheers!
Answer: It will be gone by 2009 (Score:5, Insightful)
But without corporations pushing their email to these devices you won't get the blackberry user base, and lets face it most big corporations haven't liked anything else Apple up to this point so why change for this product?
Now the home user? The reason most don't have a smart phone is that they just don't need it. Most of the regular phones on the market already do far more and are alot more complicated than people want them to be. The average person is going to ask why they need to upgrade to this expensive phone when their normal phone does far more than they ever wanted it to do.
So there will be a bunch of apple fans and tech geeks that buy this initially then it's sales will plummet and Apple will can the project.
Ok I'm done burning my karma now.
Re:Big enough for Mum to use? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:iPhone (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Predictions (Score:2, Insightful)
It's the end of the smart phone as we know it. And that's just fine.
Wrong Market (Score:3, Insightful)
Functionality will of course be important, especially if this market opens up a little, but the 'cool' factor will be paramount. Apple already has a head start on this though. Apple has a killer marketing campaign already in place for the iPod that will be studied religiously by marketing people for years to come. The iPhone with its close relation to the iPod will likely be able to ride off the marketing inertia that the iPod already has. Throw on top of this marketing a spiffy looking product with enough functionality to beat the competition, and you have a winner. Apple also has the advantage in that the cell phone/MP3 hybrid market right now is pathetic. Cell phone markers are just now starting to pull their shit together and make decent hybrid devices, but I am deeply skeptical that they will have enough inertia to compete by the time the iPhone comes out.
If they had another year or two more the competitors to Apple might be able to put up a fight, but as things stand now I personally think that they are screwed and about to get the same kind of beating that device makers in the MP3 market got. It will be another 5 years before good non-Apple mp3/phone devices begin slowly claw their way back. You can see this in the MP3 player market. When Apple hit the mp3 player market, it was the best and it soundly thrashed the competition. Even today, with other companies putting out great non-Apple MP3 devices Apple continues to dominate because the thrashing gave early MP3 player markers was so thorough. I predict the same thing to happen the MP3 player/phone hybrid market.
Re:IMHO... (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazing how Apple just happened to jump into a market, just as it started to boom! Never mind that 80% of the boom was from devices Apple sold. It's not like Apple took a market that was growing at a snails pace and infused a breath of fresh air into it. No way can Apple be responsible for growth.
The mobile phone market is completely different to this. Completely. There is an enormous existing market which has already been through most of its rapid-growth phase.
How much of a percentage are smartphones to the general phone population today? Huh.
Apple have no experience at making phones. They make stuff which can be good to use, but that's hard in the phone world.
Why? Why is it that much harder in the phone world? The iPod today already can browse lists of things well. It can even review contacts. Why is it so much different to have an iPod you can hold to your head? Apple knows interface design very well, and knowing how to help people with complex tasks on small devices is really not that much of a different task from a music player to a phone.
Is Apple not familiar with radio equipment? Never mind every computer comes with Bluetooth and WiFi. Are they not good with power management? Never mind that iPods get pretty good battery life. I'm just not seeing what about phones is so much harder that APple cannot use the experience they have to do a very good job right out of the gate.
It's not 3G which rules it out for many technophiles including myself, too.
That might matter to me a little more if my very large metra area (Denver) even had 3G or was scheduled to have it anytime soon. But it doesn't matter, because I have used EDGE and it's OK. Mainly for any extended browsing I would be using the WiFi that is pretty much ubiquitous in my day to day life, far faster than 3G and with better battery usage. SO I hardly think this rules out technical users at all (and we already know Apple will use 3G in places it makes sense, like Europe later on).
They might be moderately successful in a niche in the USA, (and in the mobile pheon world, the US is a niche), but I cannot see it becoming widely successful elsewhere.
That's because you can't see a slight redesign for other markets coming. You can't even see the growth of the iPod for what it was, I guess it's little surprise you can't see the potential of the iPhone given what exists today.
One word (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:from Apple.com (Score:4, Insightful)
This is something I've never understood. Hasn't history taught us anything? There is always a vocal minority screaming that they don't want an "all-in-one" device. They first spoke up when the Smartphones were first coming out, the original Treos and Blackberry's. Most arguments were along the lines of, "the UI is too confusing", "the battery life sucks", "I can carry a cellphone and a pager and a PDA, my pockets are ENORMOUS", etc.
However, what they really mean is that they don't want a "poorly designed all-in-one device". That's a non-argument though, because it's true of ANY product. Of course we want it to be designed well.
Back to music though, of course people want their phones to have all their music. How great would that be? One less thing to carry. The trick is doing it without making the phone bigger/shorter battery/grossly more expensive. Do that, and it'll sell like hotcakes. Well, as long as its branded and marketed with an "i" in the beginning of its name.
Monthly cost (Score:4, Insightful)
Why mod you down? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do that? Why not mod you up and up and up... to make it easier to find your post later. There is a large difference between being a troll, and being wrong. I'm sure you sincerely believe what you say.
But without corporations pushing their email to these devices you won't get the blackberry user base, and lets face it most big corporations haven't liked anything else Apple up to this point so why change for this product?
On the other hand, what if consumer push is more interesting to more people than business email push? The Yahoo push mail is an interesting option. Does everyone on earth really have more interest in their business email than the personal stuff?
Now the home user? The reason most don't have a smart phone is that they just don't need it. Most of the regular phones on the market already do far more and are alot more complicated than people want them to be.
Sounds like a a great idea then is to take a complicated device and make it much simpler. I'm not sure I know any company that has any experience at that.
The average person is going to ask why they need to upgrade to this expensive phone when their normal phone does far more than they ever wanted it to do.
Does the average person really like the phone they have?
So there will be a bunch of apple fans and tech geeks that buy this initially then it's sales will plummet and Apple will can the project.
Ok I'm done burning my karma now.
You misspelled "credibility". Brave of you to post where we can all read your thoughts in a year.
Re:IMHO... (Score:5, Insightful)
...I don't think the iPhone is going to be big at all. The ipod was/is huge becuase it was a relatively early entrant in a market that was just on the verge of exploding in size, and it was hugely advertised and hyped, and there wasn't any real competition for at least a couple of years. The tie-in with iTunes helped too.
You have to think about markets in terms of consumers and uses. When the iPod came out there were already a lot of people trying to sell digital players, but none of them were very well designed, none of them did a good job of accommodating the entire workflow, none of them were really easy to learn and use. There were players with better stats and more features, but the adoption was very limited. Most people were sticking with portable CD players as a result. The iPod changed that both by providing the right package and through good marketing.
Now take a look at the market the iPod is targeting. It is aimed at the smartphone market, which has a lot of existing products, but fairly small adoption of those products. Most people are sticking with cheap, low end cell phones and a lot of people are not happy with those either. For the iPhone to be huge they need to repeat what they did with the iPod. Apple needs to provide the entire workflow and they need to do it so it is learnable and easy and they need to market it right. I think the marketing is working so far. The question is, can Apple provide a good user experience and will AT&T hold up their end of that experience?
The mobile phone market is completely different to this.
Apple is aiming at the smartphone market, not just the phone market. As with the iPod they hope to take a significant chunk of that market and they hope to pull people in from the lower end phone market, much as the iPod pulled in people from the Discman market.
I haven't paid more than $100 US for a new phone in eight years, and I'm a technophile who upgrades every year, ususally to a high-end just-released model.
In 2001, how many people had paid more than $100 for their portable music player (usually a CD player)? I'm guessing less than 1% of the market.
Apple have no experience at making phones.
They had no experience at making portable music players.
They make stuff which can be good to use, but that's hard in the phone world.
It is hard in the music player market too, which is why it is still really hard to find an iPod competitor that is as easy or nice to use. I don't even own an iPod, but I've used them without a problem. Apple is good at UIs and usability testing to create a polished user experience.
Above all, phones have to be good phones first, then be good ipods, then have other stuff they do well.
To not be a flop, they need to be a better phone. That shouldn't be hard. It takes a minimum of 5 key presses to call a number in my phonebook using my very "simple, just a phone" cell phone. To do well they need to be as good an iPod as the iPod with a permissible slightly larger learning curve. To revolutionize the market, they need to perform a few other functions just as well and just as easily and they need to keep the user experience clean and easy (AT&T may be a problem here).
My SonyEricsson W850 is a very good phone, a great walkman, and also lets me browse the Internet at broadband speeds in a decent way, has good Java games available, a decent-enough camera, a torch, alarm clock and so on.
The W850 is maybe a bit better than par for the course, which is to say 99% of all people do not want to spend the time messing around with it even enough to learn to use the browser, e-mail, or alarm clock. 50% of people probably do not even want to take the time to learn to use SMS or the camera on it and most people just buy a cheaper phone or ignore all those features you talk about. This is
Re:Battery life will kill it, hands down (Score:3, Insightful)
I doubt my phone now has five hours of talk time.
This would only be a problem if you were going to use it for watching video on a long trip (perhaps a very long plane trip?) and were going to drain the battery completely. Still, I don't think it has enough storage to store enough video for a >5 hour trip. I guess maybe you could be on a flight to Hawaii and completely drain the battery playing Tetris while listening to music and then you'd have to be "super pissed" because you couldn't make a call without recharging when you land.
On the other hand, that could be a problem with pretty much any phone. I don't see it as much of an issue, really.
Why did Apple partner with AT&T? HSPDA vs EVDO (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Retail channel
There were many big problems to solve simultaneously, perhaps including one that couldn't be solved any other way, than partnering with at least one carrier: consumers today buy cell phones from wireless providers. That meant that Apple had to get the iPhone into wireless stores to really break into the market with anything other than a hobbyist handset maker niche. AT&T has over 2000 stores in the U.S., apparently. Other large wireless providers are similar in scale of retail presence. Wireless providers have stores in airports, big malls, little malls, downtown areas, inside of other stores like Radio Shack, Costco, etc. Apple couldn't build that kind of retail network in time to sell the iPhone, it needed to get the device into places where people were already looking for phones.
2. Give and Take of Negotiations & Shaking the Industry
I suspect that Apple would have preferred to be able to secure deals with multiple vendors in the U.S. However, the cell phone industry is seriously distorted, globally, not merely in the U.S. The handset makers think that the wireless carrier is the customer, which is the ultimate cause of cell phone suckage. Cell phones are camels designed by committes of people who have never even imagined a desert oasis, let alone been to one. Apple probably had to grant a period of exclusivity to Cingular / AT&T in order to get the rest of the things Apple needed for the iPhone to be an industry shaker -- which it already has been, despite the fact that it won't even be in consumer hands for a few more weeks. And Apple got a whole lot of stuff, some of it unprecedented including changes to the provider's network to support "visual voicemail". Companies like Verizon, even though they may provide good service to their customers, also are wed to the distorted market. They perceive bluetooth as a competitive threat, and cripple it in their phones to lock their customers into their ringtone sales engine and into paying extra to transfer photos from the phone to their computer. Apple's insistance that the iPhone not be hobbled by the carrier led Verizon to say "Thanks, we'll try it our way." But the Djinni is out of the bottle, on June 29. As consumers learn what these devices can really do, they'll be demanding blue tooth sync, 802.11 connection to their PCs, and other iPhone features from Verizon. Verizon will see its subscriber base shrink if they don't provide similar, un-hobbled capability to their customers.
3. HSPDA vs. EVDO
There's another interesting tidbit regarding the 3G network market in the U.S. that might be a factor. AT&T/T-Mobile/MISC GSM Vendors appear to be seriously lagging behind Verizon/Sprint/Alltell, which blanketed the U.S. Market with 2.4 Mbit EVDO [wikipedia.org] data service many months ago. In fact this seems to be "common wisdom" amongst Slashdot / Gizmodo / Engadget geeks. As everyone knows, AT&T and the many other network providers around the globe are betting on the other major 3G network technology, HSPDA [wikipedia.org]. What seems to have been overlooked, in the frustration with the slow pace of 3G rollout from the GSM vendors, is that HSPDA seems on the brink of crushing EVDO in terms of bandwidth. According to that wikipedia page "Current HSDPA deployments now support 1.8 Mbit/s, 3.6 Mbit/s, 7.2 Mbit/s and 14.4 Mbit/s in downlink." One of my gadget geek friends was able to confirm that HSPDA service is available in his
What about the iPod? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:business users (Score:5, Insightful)
2) No synching with enterprise email services.
I already have one. (Score:3, Insightful)
business users will love the iPhone (Score:5, Insightful)
The iPhone is about a balance of features that people really want. Business people would love an iPod in their phone, because they spend a fair bit of time on airplanes, in hotels, in airports, in taxi cabs. They also would love an easy to use map system that could help them find a decent restaurant nearby. The Apple iPhone commercials [apple.com] don't look like they target business users, but they nail squarely what a business user wants from a phone. They want to carry less shit with them. They want to be able to quickly look up something on the internet, or bookmark something they heard about for reference later. They're going to buy an iPhone and their older iPod and Palm Pilot will be in a drawer.
The biggest thing, however, will be ease of use. If the Address book doesn't have some asinine limit of 500 contact numbers (it wont') and if it syncs easily and reliably (it will) and if the web browser really works and if Google Maps are easy to use on the iPhone, these things are going to be the hottest new business gadget since the original Palm Pilot.
It's about efficiency. Carry one or two fewer devices everywhere I go. Carry one device that's easy to learn and easy to use, rather than so hard to learn that many users don't even know about the advanced features and so hard to use that the advanced features they know about rarely get touched. Sending text messages, checking email, and placing and receiving calls need to work well.
A few business people I know are going to get an iPhone for one feature: visual voicemail (random access to voicemail queue). They calculate that the time and annoyance they will save with that single feature more than justifies the cost of the device.
I'm still waiting ...... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Does "Not M$" == "Bad for Business" (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me preface this with "I'm not a hardcore business user." I don't sit at home answering work emails. I sync my phone with Outlook primarily to get my calendar items and contacts. If I couldn't do that, there would be zero business use for my phone. Having my meetings on my phone has saved my skin on multiple occasions...it's definitely a must have feature for me. As far as I can tell, the iPhone doesn't allow me to do this.
I don't know about this iCal deal, but if it's in leopard that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to hit the iPhone, or does it?
A phone that takes both hands? (Score:3, Insightful)
The last thing we need is a phone that takes both hands to operate.
In California, using a non-hands-free phone while driving becomes a moving violation in mid-2008. Washington State is doing this too. (That was enacted right after a 5-car collision caused by a Blackberry user [nwsource.com].) I've had my truck rear-ended twice by people on cell phones. One said to the cop, afterwards, "I was just finishing my call". Had a near miss two weeks ago; someone pulling out of a parking space on a busy street was using a phone, so they couldn't turn the wheel fast enough and drove across two lanes of traffic before straightening out.
Remember the iDrive [bmwworld.com], from BMW? That was a disaster, hated by many owners. Too much "head down" time, looking at the display instead of the road.
The future is hands-free, not two-handed.
Re:from Apple.com (Score:5, Insightful)
Because a) your attention is divided and b) it's NEVER polite no matter what you think. There are times that it's a necessary evil, but that's not the same thing as "polite".
What makes you think that people don't? The hottest phone on the market right now is the Motorola Razr. A phone that's valued more for its small size than its cunning text messaging features.
See paragraph above. If your statement was true, then the Razr wouldn't be so popular. You can't extrapolate your own specific wants/needs in high-end phones to the entire market if the data doesn't support it. Specifically, this engadget story [engadget.com] lists the best selling phone as the Nokia 1100. A low-end candybar phone with a Black and White screen. The Razr trails behind with 50 million of its own sales. (According to the article.) "Big" phones like the Treo and Q don't even show up as a blip on the radar.
Re:The issue for me is Pre-Press. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the touch screen could be seen as a design risk, and it's possible that it will be rejected by the market. There are undoubtedly other people like you who are adicted to buttons, and dialing in the dark. I suspect that even most of those people will find that they can adapt to the iPhone easily enough, particularly if it provides haptic feedback as a user preference. (Some people might want that turned off -- something you can't do with a button.)
Re:Don't see the allure.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, yeah, I know, you're absolutely perfect at dividing your attention, and it's just everybody else that can't manage to do it safely.
My Fiancee... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:haptic feedback, tactile response from touchscr (Score:3, Insightful)
I could see this being very effective. I have noticed that the tactile feedback given by the vibration feature in the Nintendo Wii's controller is fantastic. It doens't have to be overwhelming to let you know that something is going on.
I'm not sure how well this will work with the iPhone but I could see it solving the tactile keyboard feedback problem. This is the first I had heard about this feature.
I've about had it with PDA Phones (Score:4, Insightful)
I had a phone with Windows mobile on it. It sucked ass big time. There wasn't really one thing it did well other than crash.
Then, I got a Blackberry. Their desktop 'push' concept sucks, although to be fair, it worked pretty reliably. The service was bloody expensive though. Also there was no DUN support at the time, which is my biggest need in a phone.
Now I have a Treo 650. It sucks the least, but still sucks pretty bad. The DUN support is good, although the cell company was useless support-wise, the email works via IMAP and the software isn't too bad. Seriously though. Palm, I'm looking at you. You've had products on the market for 10 years now. The product itself has usually been pretty decent. Your syncing software, and the whole notion of conduits, is not only bad, it's pathetic. No Palm device I've ever had has synched reliably with any OS, let alone one that's not MS. But, I hear you boys are going over to linux. That might maybe possibly help. We'll see.
My point is, if the iPhone sucks anywhere close to as much ass as the other ones AND lacks a keypad, thereby limiting texting potential, it'll be DOA.
Re:My opinion. (Score:3, Insightful)
No they don't. "To skip to the next message, press 6. To return to the previous message press 5".
There's little redesign in this part. You press a button and dollars to donuts it's sending a DTMF tone.
The list of actual messages would just come down via GPRS, at the start. The whole "we rebuilt it from the ground up" is marketing spin, not much more.
Re:I've about had it with PDA Phones (Score:3, Insightful)
It is way cool being more ogranized than my partner, who is naturally organized, but not so tech-oriented. Who knows, I might have even gotten good grades in school if I had had one of these things long ago.
It could be better of course, the phone hangs about once a week for no apparent reason (reminds me of Win 3.1 or 95), it is really not a very good phone, and the battery life is less than 2 days always even though I really do not phone much (but I do sync a lot).
But the upsides are brilliant, being organized and in-touch no matter where I am is invaluable.
I am sure I could do this with Blackberry too (they pioneered this after all), but we have an Outlook/Exchange setup. I am sceptical that an iPhone will be any better than WM5 for someone who is tied to that monolith, as are most enterprises to my experience.
I am sure the iPhone will be a mediocre phone. But it might be fine for hipsters who don't need to co-ordinate with many people. It certainly looks cool, and will probably do a great job playing music.