To the surprise of almost no-one, Apple Computer has launched its iPhone combination mobile phone/iPod/wireless Internet terminal. The basic US$500 device, modestly styled as a reinvention of the phone, is a response to a number of market trends: levelling off of demand for the iPod, the appearance of alternatives such as Zune (which could also morph into a mobile phone any time soon) and the industry calculation that sales of music-enabled cell phone are currently outstripping those of iPods by a factor of two-to-one. Much is made of the iPhone’s user interface touch display - “…, letting users control iPhone with just their fingers.” –  almost as if ordinary mobile phones were operated with some other organ or mechanism. “iPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone,” according to  Apple ceo Steve Jobs. “We are all born with the ultimate pointing device - our fingers - and iPhone uses them to create the most revolutionary user interface since the mouse.”

Will iPhone take the mobile phone world by storm? The iPod element certainly appears to have more street cred than, say, the Sony Ericsson Walkman range – the latest addition to which (the W200) was also launched this week. But then there is Nokia. With close to 70mn music-enabled phones sold. iPods? Around the same number shifted by mid-December. But that’s dwarfed by Nokia’s overall cell phone sales. “More than 850 million people have a Nokia mobile phone in their hands. No other consumer electronics company in the world has ever had such a customer base,” noted Nokia president and ceo Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo at this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
John Williamson