Understanding the iPhone Phenomena
A historical footnote: If you were in the market for a
mobile smart phone prior to July 4th weekend 2007 what were your
options? Well, if memory serves me
correctly, here’s what the offerings looked like in the U.S. for a phone that
had: 1) a decent keyboard for fast typing (yes, for less nimble adults); 2) ability to play
music and take decent pictures; and 3) easy synch up with email, preferably work email:
- On Spint you had the Palm Treo and Blackberry
- On Verizon you had the Palm Treo, Blackberry, LG enV and Moto Q
- On AT&T you had the Palm Treo, Blackberry and private label HTC
- On Helio (who? they are an MVNO) you had Ocean
Blackberry owned the corporate market and RIM was just starting to make in-roads into the consumer space with sleeker phones and better marketing. They have certainly come a long way.
The beloved Treo had a loyal following and the Palm OS was (and you could argue is still in some ways) the most well-tested and most consumer oriented mobile OS on the market. But Palm started to experience a crisis of vision and execution which first led to a burst into retail and advertising and then a precipitous retreat.
The rest of the smart phones such as enV and Ocean were
niche products with no great following and synching with work email was not a selling feature. It wasn’t for lack of trying, LG and Samsung certainly tried as did Moto to market their vast lineup of phones. But if you’ve ever tried
to shop for one of these phones at a U.S. carrier’s Website you know how
difficult it is to rise above the fray. 
(Like shopping for a “nice red” at a wine store that features hundreds
of brands from around the world – which one to pick?).
BTW if you are interested in finding out why the experience is so bad and who is doing it right, check out this article on Keynote’s online magazine: http://www.keynote.com/benchmark/mobile_wireless/article_americas_ears_thumbs.shtml
In other words there was a hole waiting to be filled to
introduce smart phones to the American consumer. Apple without a doubt filled that hole. Using something truly new and different and pushing it with
marketing know-how, the team in Cupertino woke up the entire industry. Now instead of having to scroll through 100
phones on a carrier’s Web site, you could simply learn about and choose 1.
At the end of the day it really isn’t about giving consumers choice. That’s just business-world gobbledygook. It’s about helping consumer’s make a decision that makes them feel good. If they don’t feel good – no one does after scrolling through 100 phones – then they do nothing or just go for price.
The iPhone is referred to as exogenous or coming from outside the
industry and it heralded a step-function increase in consumer adoption for
mobile technology because the message was simplified and the decision made
easy. But it is by no means close to
nearing mass adoption. The tipping point, if you will, is still far away. For the iPhone to continue its ride, synching work email will be an important feature and Apple has already announced plans to do so.
To get a preview for what the coming months will look like at the Canadian email king's headquarters, see this NYT article “BlackBerry’s Quest: Fend Off the iPhone” (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/technology/27rim.html?_r=1&oref=slogin ).
So the match-up between Apple and RIM is clear.
How will other manufacturers respond? Well, if the lack of innovation in MP3 players is any indication, Apple doesn’t have much to worry about. I was recently told that even the much vaunted Walkman franchise has failed to deliver a good music listening experience on Sony Ericsson mobile phones. In the land of Sony Ericsson the Swedish mobile carrier has opted to pre-load Sony Ericsson phones with a music player from an Italian company.
Why can’t Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, and LG get it right in the U.S. despite the head start? Maybe because they are still solving the wrong problem. With both the iPod and iPhone Apple has shown that it has learned not to confuse the tech-savvy early adopter market with the mass consumer market (and it skipped the wireless industry big-booth love-fest in Vegas last month to punctuate the point). Maybe this is just a U.S. dichotomy. We’ll soon find out as Apple gives Europe a second try with a 3G version of the iPhone.
