iPhone Awareness Versus Others

I was not at the Apple WWDC – too much of a groupie thing.  All the main news was about the iPhone.

But it does give one pause.  How can the iPhone clones ever get anywhere?  Sure, they can LOOK and maybe even FEEL like the iPhone, but where are the applications?  There have been 250,000 developer downloads of the iPhone SDK.

If it is the apps that matter, then Apple has a lock.  (And I don’t even believe in locks   How they pulled this off is astonishing.  Compare the buzz around iPhone with the Windows Mobile phones.  MS has had a Windows Mobile product since 1997.  There are 70 million Google hits for Windows Mobile.  Apple released the iPhone less than 1 year ago – there are 220 million Google hits on iPhone.  (iPhone has twice as many Google hits as BlackBerry at 108 Million – I think a very fair test given the unique names of both products.)

http://www.apple.com/iphone/webapps/

There are now 600 WebApps for iPhone.  There will be more than 3,000 by the end of the year.  Sure, most are stupid, but most BlackBerry apps at Handango are stupid (Wine Info, etc.).  And the “install” is trivial.  I tried to install Opera on my BlackBerry 4 times before I gave up.  But every iPhone WebApp I install works right away.

Is it perfect?  Hell no.  It needs 3G.  I’m not sure I like the size.  But they will sell millions.

Now there is a $199 iPhone.

BTW, the Zero key on my BlackBerry broke about 6 weeks ago and I switched 100% over to my iPhone.  And I mean cold turkey switched over.  I turned off my BB service at T-Mobile.  My two major issues are 100% solved: (1) IMAP mail solves the problem of mail being all unread; (2) New software feature locks the keyboard during calls.  Can wear in pocket while talking.  – Zero problems left.

Only 1 issue left to tackle – International Roaming.  I got very used to easy BlackBerry email while out of the country.  T-Mobile has a great plan.  Apparently, the iPhone uses a lot of data BW and the bills are high.  But that is not a phone issue, it is a plan issue. 

Initial iPhone 2.0 Press

Apple iPhone news is on the front page of 15 of the 20 most viewed news sites in the English speaking world.

Amazing.

Steve Jobs has created a pop culture icon out of a mobile phone.

If I worked at RIM, I would be very concerned that no amount of product finesse can overcome this kind of completely free PR. 

 

Cable Internet and MSOs Capping Internet Traffic

I am not a purist about open Internet or the idea that all plans must be unlimited data, but here are questions for the NSP/ISP industry (Network/Internet Service Providers).

Assumption 1: Internet service delivery is a little cheaper every year

Assumption 2: People are using more Internet data transfer every year

Conclusion 1: “Fair” service packages from NSP/ISPs will need to provide more data every year for roughly the same price.  Think of this as Internet inflation indexing, as in a pension adjustment.

Question 1: Who will decide what the “base level” of data transfer represents an “average user” so that the ISPs can charge a premium for heavy users?

Question 2: How transparent will this process be?  Will ISPs use a neutral third party to calibrate the “normal growth” of Internet usage?

Question 3: As users consume the Internet in new ways, who will decide what is normal and what is premium?

Question 4: Have the architects of the new plans any understanding of the long (very long) history surrounding the commodity-dollar concept and how the basket of goods used for the CPI is a problem area?
NSPs and ISPs need to introduce new packages having already thought through all of the above.  They are in danger of misreading the market and causing their own demise.  How?  By creating attrition of heavy users to other providers and therefore creating a declining market for themselves.  At first they will have a margin increase because heavy users will have left and service will be cheaper to provide.  But attrition grows rapidly and alternative ISPs who welcome heavy users will become the new vanguard of the market.
I have heard proposals from MSOs (Cable ISPs) that propose a cap at 20GB per month and then charging $1 per GB thereafter.

Let’s see … I can burn a 4.77 GB DVD for about $0.25 and mail it to a friend for about $0.75.  Therefore, the physical world costs $1 for slow delivery of about 5 GB.  Tell me again why it costs $5 to download a 5 GB movie?  The idea isn’t broken, but the numbers are.  For an HD movie (about 10 GB), they will want to charge $10, plus the cost of the movie of course.

Simplifying my world …

I have been using multiple tools for years to communicate across many Internet media. Today I am moving everything to WordPress. Sometime over the Summer I will try to create a meaningful archive of prior blogs and posts, but for now, my world is being reduced to WordPress blogs.

Grover Righter

My main profile in the business world can be found on LinkedIn at

http://www.linkedin.com/in/groverrighter