Steve Jobs 2008 WWDC Keynote - iPhone Popularity Set To Rise
Well, Steve Jobs and Apple delivered in terms of content: the 2008 WWDC keynote was significantly better than last year’s. That’s the content, by the way; not the presentation itself, which seems not to have delighted everyone e.g. see the coverage at Engadget. (not enough Steve Jobs, I guess). Herewith, my initial reactions…
New iPhone 3G - Not Perfect, But Much Better!
- Apple’s offering is much improved. Now, the iPhone has 3G; and the business model is better, with a reduced up-front cost to get an iPhone in your pocket.
- Prices will start at $199 in the US (let’s see what the prices turn out to be in different countries). iPhone 3G goes on-sale July 11, and I expect it to do significantly better in terms of sales than the previous model.
Large Numbers of iPhone 2 Software Early Adopters, Including The Enterprise
- The iPhone 2.0 SDK has been getting broad early support from developers. There are at least tens of thousands of developers working with iPhone (and it may be more than that).
- Significant numbers of corporations (especially larger corporations) have been exploring using iPhone in places where they currently use Blackberry. That say’s they’re open to the idea of switching from Blackberry to iPhone.
Games On iPhone Will Be Super Popular
- The graphics capapability of iPhone (not least, the high-res screen) beats other mobile handsets by some margin, and the devices’s built-in sensors of lots of potential for interesting game control (like the Wii)
- Prices will be sensible - both Sega and Pagea Software will each be charging $9.99 per game
- Taken together, this combination of sensible pricing, unique graphics quality, and uniquene game play, means that games (and other entertainment software) on iPhone are going to be big.
There will be lots of other great software too (and the push notification service Apple announced today will enable new classes of app to be developed); and the Enterprise and new Ad Hoc distribution methods look good. The iPhone 2 software update will be pushed to all iPhone owners in early July, which is when the App Store will be open for business.
Bottom Line
- In terms of market share, the iPhone is now well-positioned to overtake both RIM’s Blackberry devices, and all Windows Mobile devices combined, by the end of 2009.
Asam Bashir wrote:
Hmmm, what the hell was in those boxes that Apple PR disinformation team was distributing with padlocks and NDA do not open stickers….
Yeah, so, 100 million iPhones by 2010, at a minimum….
And by end of 2008, easily more then 10 million iPhones sold…
Posted 09 Jun 2008 at 7:26 pm ¶
simon wrote:
To sell 100M iPhones by the end of 2010 might be a stretch (but it would a good goal to set).
Some of it depends whether Steve Jobs accidently “forgot” to reveal any details that might the package not so competitive e.g. if they increase the charge for data usage.
Posted 09 Jun 2008 at 8:14 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
Don’t think it’s a stretch at all, if you look how iPod market developed - still expect to see smaller form factor iPhone at some stage, and depending how it sells in Asia, flip top variant. By 2010 iPhone 3.0 will have worldwide availability, and new killer features beyond touch interface, and Atom processors…
Snow Leopard details coming out now, first time ever they’ve had to move Mac OS X off the main keynote, but would have been too big a keynote then and ended up being like a Sun keynote where you come out confused…
Posted 09 Jun 2008 at 8:39 pm ¶
simon wrote:
Well, iPods (now at peaks sales), seem to sell on average c. 50M units per year currently. It took iPod six years to reach those kind of sales levels. See:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/80/Ipod_sales_2008_Q1.svg
Granted, mobile phones are a much bigger market than music players; and Apple has sold 6M iPhones in the first full year on the market. I think they should blow past their target of 10M sales during calendar year Jan-Dec 2008. Let’s say they actually sell 15M, and the total cumulative sales at the end of 2008 of 18M. In 2009 and 2010, they need total sales of 82M (an average of 41M per year), to get total cumulative sales of 100M by the end of 2010.
I think they *could* do that… I just don’t think it’s trivial to make that happen.
Clearly, they focussed on iPhone in the keynote because that’s the product line that had the most news for developers; and there was a new product to announce.
Interesting that it’s the first WWDC where there’s a good story for Apple developers that isn’t about Mac; and that so much of WWDC this year is dedicated to iPhone.
Posted 09 Jun 2008 at 9:06 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
Don’t forget to factor in the limited availability in the first year, restricted to US, UK, France, Germany, the iPhone 2.0 roll-out worldwide increases the market almost four fold, and the new price point means that where the iPhone isn’t officalliy available, it will almost certainly be there unlocked.
All the Mac stuff is still there, just moved off the keynote, there are big announcements regarding Snow Leopard, but WWDC is also now three times the size it was before, reflecting how Apple is growing both retail business and development..
Posted 09 Jun 2008 at 9:55 pm ¶
Mr X wrote:
A few points:
- I think Apple have done just enough to keep their lead - no more, no less - it will sustain them for a year max before the others really catch up - android is looking good for example. Apple need to do something more in that time frame - I expect they are working on something - we will see.
- Pricing options clearly much more market competitive.
- Interesting approach to “background” apps - doesn’t solve the all uses cases though - for example if you want to send info *from* the phone periodically it ain’t going to help - eg GPS position logger. They should do the opposite for this - use the single channel from the phone to an Apple server and then developers can access position from the server with the right credentials.
- mobileme and all that push goodness is 59 quid extra - they need to push the uptake of this as the potential stickyness of such a service could be very important down the track - the web app parts of the demo looked extremely slick - if they really deliver it could not just be ‘exchange for the rest of us’ it could be a competitor to Exchange - they just need to add a ’small business pack’… you see where I’m going - again head to head with Google.
- iTouch - clearly the iPhone in a Wifi world - so far they have been the same - I wonder if this will be the place for innovation first in the area of soft phone/chat.
Posted 10 Jun 2008 at 9:48 am ¶
Mr X wrote:
On Snow Leopard - shows Apple is a well managed engineering company - they really need to spend some time focusing on basics - quality, speed and fundamental building blocks.
Or it could show a trend of engineering resources being less computer OS and more “cloud” services…… iWork for the web?
Posted 10 Jun 2008 at 10:00 am ¶
simon wrote:
I suspect it’s a bit of both. Clearly, cloud computing services are going to get more popular in the future. And, equally clearly, improving quality of products is going to be important to a company whose brand is all about stuff “just working”.
The other thing I’d say is that it would be surprising if Apple wasn’t working on some new kinds of Mac products; and so the company may simply not want to discuss new OS features that could be needed for new products (e.g. a really great tablet form factor laptop).
Posted 10 Jun 2008 at 10:15 am ¶
simon wrote:
@Mr X’s few points
re: just enough
I think Apple has done much more than “just enough”.
The fundamental point is that mobile phone network operators simply aren’t interested in providing a good service to their customers. Don’t ask me why! But they aren’t. In fact, they’re mostly bordering on the criminal in the way they treat their customers - at the very least, they rip them off with pretty sharp business practices. It’s *really* common for customers to *hate* their mobile phone provider, for just that reason.
Every phone handset maker, apart from Apple, including the companies that will make Android handsets, cedes control of the handset to the network operator. As a result, Android handsets are going to be a horribly fragmented set of devices, and the devices will be crippled by the network operators.
Apple, on the other hand, has kept ownership of as much as it can, in terms of the relationship between the customer and the phone. Apple can update the phone software, and provides cloud computering phone services, and controls the sale applications etc. That’s going to destroy the competition, as phone software becomes more and more important down the road.
Prior to yesteday, phone makers could have taken comfort in the fact that Apple’s products were expensive, so they could undercut them to get sales. However, today, it’s clear that Apple has decided to go after market share in a big way, and is going to price accordingly.
MobileMe is going to be really successful, especially if they let people use their own domains (which it’s not yet clear if they will, despite .mac allowing this). As you say, if they add some more features, this could easily evolve to be a big Exchange competitor.
Posted 10 Jun 2008 at 10:55 am ¶
Mr X wrote:
I guess I’m seeing Blackberry as the main competitor in this space - who have a similar level of control of the core services and have a reasonably stable platform.
Posted 10 Jun 2008 at 11:13 am ¶
simon wrote:
You’re right about Blackberry having a similar level of control. It’s one of the reason’s they’ve been successful.
However, RIM hasn’t really evolved their platform in any meaningful way over the years. Still, the only really well-executed feature of a Blackberry is that it does push e-mail quite reliably (it’s not perfect, by any means), and lets people type quick replies. And, the e-mail isn’t even that full-featured e.g. it doesn’t deal with HTML e-mail at all.
All the other features of Blackberries are not well-executed.
iPhone is going to wipe the floor with Blackberry in the next couple of years.
Posted 10 Jun 2008 at 11:58 am ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
Apple has the added advantage that developments in OS X Leopard will filter down to OS X iPhone very quickly, it’s impossible for RIM to replicate that in any way. Snow Leopard will lead to a very lean and mean system, and when combined with a low power Intel Atom processor in the future, together with GPU optimisations, provides the solid groundwork for future human interface evolution..
Posted 10 Jun 2008 at 6:08 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
100 % of my in-car iPhone needs are now complete with announcement from TomTom:
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSB46553120080609
So now I’ve got decent turn-by-turn, combined with my FM transmitter/charger, so got full navigation and handsfree/iTunes, perfect…
Posted 10 Jun 2008 at 11:35 pm ¶
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Posted 22 Jul 2008 at 10:38 am ¶