|
iPhone: not everyone’s cup of tea |
|
|
|
Friday, 04 January 2008 |
|
Ovum says iconic Apple device is not for the mass market…
While US media reports have Apple’s iPhone as one of the consumer smashes of 2007, an analysis by Ovum of the device’s success in unlocking the use of the mobile Internet in the UK questions whether the phone is a mass market proposition at all. The Ovum judgment, part of its EuroView Daily Comment service, is courtesy of John Delaney, principal analyst in the company’s Consumer Group. Delaney was commenting on reports in The Financial Times that 60% of O2’s
UK
iPhone customers were sending or receiving more than 25Mbytes of data per month on their phones, and that less than 2% of O2 UK’s other contract customers use more than 25Mbytes a month. Citing the iPhone’s user interface (UI), together with the availability of flat rate tariffs, Ovum agrees that the device has the power to unleash some of the pent-up demand for the Internet on mobile phones.
Delaney qualifies this, though. “We say 'some' of the demand, however, because the iPhone is not a mass market device. It's for the relatively small number of customers who can afford it,” he offers. “The ultimate winners in the Internet handset market will be those players who can bring enough of what makes the iPhone UI successful into handsets which appeal to, and are affordable by, mainstream users. Although Apple has dazzled everyone with the popularity of the iPod, and has scored an undoubted publicity triumph with the iPhone, its track record on taking its technology innovations to the mass market is patchy, at best.”
Delaney adds the rider that “…although Apple's Macintosh PC showed the world how powerful a WIMP (Windows/Icon/Mouse/Pointer) UI could be, that UI was eventually brought to the masses not by Apple, but by Microsoft's Windows.”
Elsewhere in Apple/iPhone land, speculation is swirling about possible product improvements to the device to be announced at the Macworld Conference & Expo, being held from 14 to 18 January, 2008, at
San Francisco
’s
Moscone
Center. Candidates here include 3G capability, smaller size and longer battery life.
John Williamson |
