My original opinions about iPhone were negative. It's not that the system isn't innovative, or that it doesn't have a role, it's just Steve Jobs went to MacWorld and told everyone that the device was the bestest smartphone evah, and that people would line up around the block (or at least 2% of them would) to buy the thing for $5-600 and a two year $80/month contract. (Ok, some of that was implied from what he said, but the gist is the same.) And I looked, and thought 'how bizarre', and said that this was all crap because:

1. In order to be "the bestest smartphone evah", you have to be a smartphone. And the iPhone isn't, by any modern definition of the term, a smartphone (though Apple is reportedly considering opening it up a little. But it remains to be seen - nah, it's actively doubtful - that it'll be "smarter" - more programmable - than the average J2ME/MIDP based regular phone.)
2. $600 plus $80 a month? Are you nuts? Real smartphones don't cost anything like that.
3. It's going to be locked to Cingular^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HAT&T. This is the carrier that's using AMR-HR all the time because its capacity sucks.

And so I laughed, and got into arguments with Mac nuts, and assumed failure was imminent, though backing off a little when I heard a friend of the type who'd never touch a Mac raving about it.

But what hit me more recently is that I was almost certainly wrong. I'm going to blame Steve Jobs for this, because he lied to me. Now, you might think that's unfair, because I knew he was lying to me, but I'm going to blame him anyway, because he was lying hoping I'd know he was lying and would go off on an unrelated tangent. You see, sometimes you tell a lie to mislead someone directly, and sometimes you tell one to mislead an entire industry indirectly, and I think Jobs was doing the latter.

What was the lie? It was simple: "The iPhone is a smartphone."

But it isn't. It's not programmable. It's too fuzzy, too locked down and too lacking in functionality when it comes to smartphone type applications. Why, they've put so much multimedia and Internet surfing emphasis in it, it's hard to see how they can even compete with real smartphones! It's like someone saying "You want a tiger as a pet? Well, we have the ultimate tiger. Look!" And then they hold up a bunny rabbit, clutching a carrot in its paw, nibbling away.

So all the smartphone manufacturers went off on a tangent. They looked at this thing, and scratched their heads, and said "Jobs says this thing is a smartphone. It isn't. But the fact they think it is one means we need to assume Apple is gunning for us. So let's sit down and look at the advantages of this thing, and see if we can make our smartphones obviously better."

Or to put it another way, breeders of tigers looked into ways of making their tigers cuter. They spent many months genetically splicing the things to create tigers with long floppy ears and bucked-teeth.

Meanwhile, those who weren't making smartphones didn't bother caring that much, and those that were but were also making ordinary phones continued to look into improving their smartphones instead of their regular phones. Or, in our analogy, breeders of gerbils and kittens did nothing.

That's the problem with being clever. The consumers know what an iPhone is right away. The name actually tells you what it is. Us technical people, or people interested in cellphones, which in my case covers me twice, over-analyze it and base our opinions on what we're supposedly told.

The iPhone is what you get if you ask Apple, an extremely innovative maker of consumer electronics, to make a cellphone. Not a smartphone, just a cellphone. And their cellphone is not competing with business oriented devices at all, it's aimed at Apple's regular markets. It's a networked multimedia/communications device. It's competing not with "smartphones" but with ordinary phones. And while it has the handicap of being significantly more expensive, it's also far more capable. My V635 will never have the same capacity, thus will never be my primary portable multimedia device. Neither will my V635, being absent a large enough screen, ever have a capable web-browser. So is the iPhone worth twice what I paid for my V635? Probably, if I wanted such a thing.

Despite Mac fans claims that this is all new, it isn't. The previous attempts just haven't been very good. There's the Hiptop, better known as the Sidekick, which is immensely popular with the target audience, but is lacking in capacity for the multimedia side. If it wasn't for the "T-Mobile can't sell the iPhone" angle, I'd say the Sidekick could be effectively killed by the iPhone unless they make drastic improvements in the next few months.

Other carriers have some dedicated messaging/data type devices that really don't do a great deal but have also been valid attempts to try to get multimedia communications in the hands of consumers.

So re-evaluating this, do I think the iPhone might actually be successful? I'm going to have to say probably. AT&T is essentially the only element that can screw up right now. They can avoid improving their network, and boy, does it need improving. They can force two year contracts, locking the iPhone to a constituency that doesn't perfectly overlap with the iPhone's natural target market. But assuming they do neither, it's not hard to envisage everyone from teenagers asking for an iPhone for Christmas instead of an iPod and GoPhone, to 30 year olds getting it as their primary cellphone and music player.

I think the rest of the cellphone industry might be better off ignoring the rhetoric, and looking at who is really interested in the iPhone, looking at the name more than "what Jobs says about it".