The iPhone is the New Mac….For Now
I was in an ATT store yesterday browsing at some of the other smartphones when I overheard an interesting interaction between the salesman and a potential customer. The customer was a woman with her husband and they were looking for a new phone. They browsed all the other "smartphones" and then came across the iPhone. She was worried about the price, but asked the salesman if the iPhone was really that good compared to other phones. The salesman replied that the iPhone was way ahead of any other phone out there, was the most usable and powerful device by miles. It was, he said, leaps and bounds ahead.
I didn't hear the rest of the interaction but something tells me she bought the iPhone which is great for Apple and also reminded me of an experience 20 or so years before.
I was looking for a computer in college, it was 1990. Windows was at "3. something" and the Mac Plus was the star of the college computer store. I asked the salesman about the Mac and he said pretty much what the ATT salesman said about the iPhone. The Macintosh was leaps and bounds ahead of anything else, it had a graphical user interface and simply rocked.
If it weren't for the iPod I would be worried about the future of the iPhone. After all the story of the Mac is simple, everyone uses Macs these days, but they happen to run Windows. The spits and spats between Windows and OS X are silly these days, as Chris Seibold noted to me on iChat the other evening the difference between the two operating systems is in the range of 10-20 percent. Yes OS X is much more delightful to use, but the difference is evolutionary not revolutionary.
The iPhone, on the other hand, is revolutionary as a technical change. The question is whether Apple can keep growing in this space the way it has so far. The Macintosh created a market for personal computer and then lost it to Windows. The iPod came in on an already existing, albeit small marketplace, and dominated it. The iPhone comes into, on the face of it, a mature market, and is so far growing strongly.
I say on the face of it because while there are millions and millions of cell phones very few of them fit the smartphone description and the iPhone surpasses these so-called smartphones by a mile. The truth is that the mobile internet device market is just starting. 3G seems fast (although in Boston it doesn't, but that is another story) but in 10 years from now I guarantee 3G will be talked about like we talk about dial-up modems back in the day. Chip speed is also growing exponentially. And once someone crack the battery issue things will really change.
This is the perfect sweet spot for Apple to dominate. Apple's special sauce is not necessarily in inventing new technologies (Mac=Xerox, iPod already existed in other crappier forms) but in taking these technologies and combining hardware and software design to make something no one else can make.
It is for this reason that 10 years from now I think that the majority of Apple's profits will come from the iPhone or other portable computer devices. I am convinced that Apple and Steve Jobs is working on something that will reinvent and define the NetBook market (the NetBook phenomena looks suspiciously like the pre-iPod portable mp3 player space, lots of players putting out me-too crap).
This is the iPhone is the new Mac, it is the product I am most excited about from Apple, but it is also why I say, "for now." The iPhone is the beginning of the portable internet-enabled device revolution and somewhere in Cupertino new devices are being designed that will take this new category and define it. Like with the iPhone others will follow with their me-too versions, but like the iPhone they will not come close to capturing the magical combination of hardware and software innovation that is Apple.
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Comments
I suggested in another thread that I think the future of the desktop is where MS and Apple are going to part ways and stop competing with each other (giving the Apple fanboys new and more exciting companies to hate).
I think MS should pursue the Surface desktop model while Apple is clearly going to focus on the mobile device. I want both. A Surface in my living room or office and the iPhone to carry around with me. And neither would feel redundant of the other.
yeah, the iPhone has become my #1 computer. In my life it is certainly the new Mac.
I agree about Apple reinventing the netbook. I don’t believe it will enter that market until it can do just that.
Netbooks are a niche device that heaps of people are getting excited about but outside that niche. So ultimately they will be disappointed and letdown.
I was looking at eBay yesterday and of the four netbooks I looked at being sold privately, two were because of that letdown.
Netbooks are a niche. Too small to replace a laptop, and too large to replace an iPhone. They’re only useful for a small group of people, a niche. For everyone else, they’re just a fad.
The only hope for netbooks is for someone like Apple to reinvent them. But I can’t see it happening.
Ultrasmart phones (which at the moment is just the iPhone and Androids), are the new computers of choice.
The netbook will become a mainstream product when someone designs a model that fits in your pocket then expands to full size when you take it out to use it. In short, Mr. Howard is right, it will never go mainstream. It’s an in-betweener; A six-foot-six power forward.
Still, if Apple comes out with a mega-iPhone they better be sure it appeals to women because men don’t carry purses around. [Though it shouldn’t appeal exclusively and overtly to women because women won’t buy those gadgets either.]
The Acer Aspire One sold 2.15 million units in Q3 2008. All Macs sold in Q3 2008 totalled 2.2 millions units. All told, netbooks sold 5.6 million units. That’s pretty mainstream. It’s not the entire market, but it’s not really meant to be.