First we had the speculation, then the euphoria, and now the reaction. What's all this fuss about Apple's iPhone?
By introducing the iPod in 2001, Apple reinvented both itself and the way we experience music. It created and defined a new market. But as growth has slowed for the company, investors have expected Apple to identify new markets.
It is pushing music sharing solutions for the home and Apple TV, which streams video from your iTunes to your TV set, but for several years iPhone has been predicted as the logical next step. It combines the two must-have devices of our time: the mobile phone and the iPod, and takes that a step further by adding a host of web-based tools. All the specs on the Apple site, and prices and dates in our piece last night.
Looking at the figures set out by Steve Jobs in his keynote yesterday, it is easy to see why Apple has is targeting the telecoms market: worldwide there annual sales are at around 26m games consoles, 94m digital cameras, 135m MP3 players, 209m PCs - and 957m phones. More on that in Jobs' interview with NBC.
Apple wants a 1% share of that global mobile market - 10 million phones by 2008.
"There's an old Wayne Gretsky quote I love - 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it's been'," said Jobs.
So how has it been received?
- The markets loved it.
- Great review of Apple in Time by Lev Grossman: "It's not quite right to call the iPhone revolutionary. It won't create a new market, or change the entertainment industry, the way the iPod did. When you get right down to it, the device doesn't even have that many new features--it's not like Jobs invented voicemail, or text messaging, or conference calling, or mobile Web browsing. He just noticed that they were broken, and he fixed them."
- David Pogue at the New York Times has an hour with an iPhone. And Steve Jobs. Pogue said: "I tried out the camera. It was really cool to frame a shot using the HUGE 3.5-inch screen; it's rare to find that big a screen on any camera."
- Some very salient observations on MocoNews: You can't download songs directly from iTunes, it's pretty expensive for a handset (especially when people have to sign up for two years), and the simplified web browser isn't such a big deal as there have been versions of those for years. (Opera is pretty good on my Sony-Ericsson, actually, but it's still frustrating not to be able to browse a full web page). James Quintana Pearce reluctantly gives in: "I have to admit I'm impressed. The iPhone is pretty cool, and it should even teach some things to the mobile handset industry, mostly around style."
- Jacqui Cheng at Infinite Loop ran into Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak on one of those Segway things yesterday. He plays polo on them apparently. Bizarre.
- John Holbo on Crooked Timber: "Kieran's quip that "They look like the apes in 2001 gazing at the monolith" becomes YouTube reality. And it's rather brilliant that the device is showing Zoolander."
- Pics of the iPhone on display at the Macworld conference. Spare a thought for the security guard.
- Wall Street Journal's hot or flop poll.
- And a last word on the Apple vs Microsoft thing from GigaOm.
• Before the euphoria completely melts away, Ryan Block on Engadget deserves praise for his mind-bogglingly fast live blogging of the announcement. Loads of photos and specs in near-as-dammit real time.
It's worth noting from Ryan's notes that the screen looks very high-resolution, but scroll down to the pic of the full New York Times homepage open within Safari. This is a 3.5" screen, but it's the full homepage. Then you can zoom in to read detail. No more squitty text WAP sites? That really is good news.
• Those pesky eBayers wasted no time: pre-sales are already listed for 4GB and 8GB iPhones, as well as a bunch of domain names like appletvbox.com, iPhoneOnlineStore.com and TheiPhone.net for a rather a hopeful $10,000.
