Will Consumers Line Up for the Next iPhone? 18 comments
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By John Biggs
As we approach the potential hour of power this June when Steve Jobs will come down from his mountain fortress bearing the new iPhone, this time with magnetometer and 3.2-megapixel camera or whatever, I keep wondering something: Will anyone buy it?
Under a decade ago it wasn’t unusual for folks to buy the latest Nokia - one after the other - simply because of the feature set offered by each subsequent model. In about 2002 or so, you’d see folks jumping from the black and white screen to the color screen to the VGA camera to the 1-megapixel to the pseudo-smartphone. Those days are gone.
Apple (AAPL) owns about 17% of the smartphone market. Early adopters could feasibly buy a phone a year. But are incremental upgrades between the iPhone 3G and the iPhone ]I[ or whatever it will be called enough to convince the 30% of iPhone 3G buyers who switched to AT&T just for the phone - mostly from the Moto RAZR - to upgrade?
Apple is obviously convinced they will. They’re buying up flash memory and planning on making about 100 million new iPhones this year. Heck, they’re even throwing a tablet into the mix. My only concern is this: once the Apple story gets old (Amazing UI! Great features! It’s Apple!), will the feature phones on the low end get more attention. In tough times it’s hard to drop three bills on a new iPhone, no matter how many magnetometers it contains. Your thoughts?
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> matter how many magnetometers it contains. Your thoughts?
A whole lot of folks are betting that "you" will drop three bills (at least?) on a new Pre even without magnetometers.
This should be interesting.
Truth be told, they're cheaper because they last longer (I'm still using my 4-year-old powerbook) and have a substantially higher resale value; quality is too important for me to downgrade to a Yugo, when for less than double the price I can get an Aston Martin
Regarding the iPhone; yeah, I'm hooked, but it's not the hardware that does it (somebody said, it's the software, stupid), because I can get a phone that has a 25 Megapixel camera (surely they're making one by now), or purchase a dedicated iPod that carries ALL of my music not "just" 3000 songs, or get a pda, a clock or watch or any of the other doodads that we need for daily living, because dedicated devices are more capable in their area of "expertise", BUT why, when I can slip something (ONE THING ONLY) in my pocket that does 25 things 98% as well as those dedicated devices?
I will take a wait and see attitude to the 3rd generation of iPhone, but suspect it will have enough new bells and whistles that I'll be willing to fork out another $10/month to get it
you may want to look into finding another job. Writing is not for you: there are just too many stylistic, idiomatic and conceptual errors in a short piece like this.
Will it be just Wi-Fi, will ATT&T have a hand in the mix, what will the costs be for cellular connectivity if it is part of the "gadget". Will it be an adjunct to the iphone, or will it cannibalize some sales. I think till the many questions are answered, you, me or any other "analyst" or "pundit" can only guess the impact of it or any new iPhone.
Based on the slant in your four short paragraphs you could have signed this "iPhone Hater".
"Once the Apple story gets old" Come on ! We're not even TWO YEARS into the iPhone! And Apple's F I R S T phone !!!
I don't think the "three bills" an iPhone requires are the compelling story either. What would be more interesting to ponder is an iPhone variant without a required data plan. An iPhone that was just a phone and an iPod, like the ROKR. But now that Apple knows how to make phones it could probably build something that would actually sell.
Does the negativity in this article have anything to do with the tablet TechCrunch is working on?
I love mine, but the 3G and GPS WOULD have come in handy over the last year! But folks like me were content, and showed restraint.
So, whatever might come out soon (all rumors at this point!) isn't only to be compared to the 3G iphone as far as incremental improvements , but to the 1st gen as well.
I just might "re-enlist" as the original contract passes!
Oh, I'm also a parent whose daughter has had Type 1 Diabetes since she was 3 years old, When I saw the 3.0 software special event, and the Lifescan Demo, I actually cried. Beautiful.
Some people carry "gadgets" because their life depends on them!
Our family is Apple, for life!
If you are referring to the giant Samsung flash memory order, please note that they were 8 GigaBIT chips, not GigaBYTE chips.
With the order, Apple could build fewer than 8 million 8 GigaBYTE iPhones, not 100 million as you are suggesting.
Details, details, details.
- 30,000+ apps and growing
- 1B downloads
- App Store ecosystem with auto-update
- new phone(s) AND iTablet (rumored, but probable)
- extreme value (platform in pocket vs feature phones)
- Skype for near free international calls
- nearly self maintaining
- great quality, reliability, support
There are so many unique advantages to buying an Apple mobile AND there is the stickiness of it. Owners KNOW these advantages and many will not give it up until it's pried out of their cold dead fingers!
On Apr 14 09:14 AM TimboM wrote:
> 100 million iPhones? Please spend a little more time researching,
> and a little less time crafting your Dashiell Hammett-like sentences.
>
>
> If you are referring to the giant Samsung flash memory order, please
> note that they were 8 GigaBIT chips, not GigaBYTE chips.
>
> With the order, Apple could build fewer than 8 million 8 GigaBYTE
> iPhones, not 100 million as you are suggesting.
>
> Details, details, details.
On Apr 14 09:36 AM pk de cville wrote:
> They won't line up like they did the last 2 years, but they will
> buy, nevertheless. Apple has several huge moats around its mobile
> platform (iPhone + iPod touch). Watch them define mobiles as they
> have computers (original Mac) and music (iPods).
>
> - 30,000+ apps and growing
> - 1B downloads
> - App Store ecosystem with auto-update
> - new phone(s) AND iTablet (rumored, but probable)
> - extreme value (platform in pocket vs feature phones)
> - Skype for near free international calls
> - nearly self maintaining
> - great quality, reliability, support
>
> There are so many unique advantages to buying an Apple mobile AND
> there is the stickiness of it. Owners KNOW these advantages and many
> will not give it up until it's pried out of their cold dead fingers!
I will not be lining up for the next iphone, but I will be picking it up as soon as I can. I am a software developer and develop User Interfaces as a large part of my job. Nothing and I mean nothing comes close the iphones UI. Many like me have analyzed the Iphones capabilities (from a objective and technical perspective, yes there are objective ways of measuring a UI and giving it a score) and short comings and there is soo little that can be changed about the phones UI. Yeah sure theres no cut and paste and all those things, but the overall experiance is beyong anything else on the market.
I broke my iphone in a minor motorcycle accident and I could not last 1 day with my backup nokia cellphone. Once you go iphone... you dont go back. Oh and that pretty much goes for all Apple products.
The tablet, I am not so sure about. I've worked with tablets before. Novel yes, useful no. Unless it has a laser keyboard and a stand or some kind of on-screen full keyboard, it won't get past novelty.
- As has been pointed out, you cannot build 100 million iPhones using 100 million 8 Gb (not GB, calling yourself TechCrunch this should ring a bell) chips. It is also 100% unclear what these chips are for, as they have a far lower density then the chips currently used in the iPhone – and certainly nobody expects Apple to make a device "bigger". These chips could be for iPods, could be used to save the system state on computers during sleep, speed up boot times or even for software delivery (they are cheap enough). But you do not really care for facts, do you?
- Apple has not thrown a "tablet into the mix"; so-called analysts, so-called tech writers and rumor mongers did. Everybody knows Apple will address the gap between the iPhone and the MacBook Air with something at some point. No announcement has been made, and it is more than unlikely to happen now, maybe for the x-mas season.
- The iPhone announcement will happen at the WWDC (starting 9th of June). Jobs and the Apple board have stated again and again that Jobs will return by the end of June. So, assuming him to "come down from his mountain fortress bearing the new iPhone" is neither an opinion, nor a fact. It is unsubstantiated drivel.
- The "Apple Story" is a story of good design, unobtrusive and seamless user interfaces, high quality, good support and the ultimate in reliability and resale value... It is unlikely to "get old" as long as there are people. The question/threat is competition and I do not see any, even over two years after the introduction of the iPhone. Calling this a "concern" of yours is mannerism?! The Apple story will not get the least bit old, as long as people who have nothing to say can safely rely on it for clicks.