Canadian Marketing Blog

Apple unveils the new Apple iPhone

My prediction for 2007... I can see the future, there will be much longer line-ups at the Apple store. Hot damn, I gotta get me one of these!

Here is the breaking news over at Engadget - The Apple iPhone.

Hat tip to Mitch Joel for sending the link.

Despite all the hoards of news articles and Macfans with their eyes wide open, I think it's too early on this to start throwing out our Blackberries, Treos, and Qs (or even planning their demise). There's lots of shortcomings associates with Apple's iPhone (not to mention the letdowns of the actual magnitude of Steve's announcements at Macworld, with all the hype and all generated by their Apple.com hero banner): missing the mainstream consumer price sweet spot, the misadventures of no buttons or stylus, the risky Mac OS implementation, lack of 3G support, 0 current ownership over the iPhone name, and the nice long delay before release for competitor's to get their act (or at least marketing) together.

I say, Apple's got a lot of work and challenges ahead of them if they hope to get that 1% share of the worldwide market. Good luck pulling an iPod on this one (and AppleTV for that matter).

You may be right, and I am not throwing my Blackberry out - not ever!

However, Apple is not playing by the regular rules here - not even in the same game. They did not invent a different phone, they managed to integrate some phone functionality into a sexy little package that will likely be the centre of peoples lives in the future. It may take a while, but Apple is attractive and innovative. Consumers love Apple because of that - it is all about the design. and because Apple does it so well, the influncers spread the word about those products like runny-nose cold going through a day-care.

1% marketshare worldwide, I don't see that being an issue. Not right out of the gates mind you, but give it time and the ability to have content in a variety of forms (I am not talking about ringtones here folks) and they will likely be closer to 10% than 1%.

At least my portfolio hopes so!

There's no doubt that Apple is innovative and has a certain consumer-adored style, however it's hard to grasp that a significantly large number of consumers will want or need this kind of restyled smart device.

Convergence is one hot topic, but these device types and functionalities have only been widespread and popular in the corporate world, where I definately don't see many companies eagerly getting ready to trade in their employees' other devices or contracts for the toy (maybe ad execs).

There will be strong consumer support, starting with hardcore Apple'rs first. However (and not so normal), I don't think those kinds of numbers of regular consumers will be ready to fork up the kind of dollars Apple wants for its iPhone - especially when they've already invested in one of the many released iPods and a good'ol cell phone.

Maybe 1% (Macfans probably round up around that number), but further adoption will need to be driven by some continuing innovation on Apple's part and some serious competition. Especially for a number like 10%.

Saturday Night Live did a great spoof on this....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Kd-beTSdkQ

Too bad we can't view it - apparently, the video has been removed at the request of copyright owner NBC Universal because its content was used without permission.

That would've been fun to see, if anyone finds another stream of the video please post!

It appears news streams / blogs, after writing about the hype, are beginning to turn and present their thoughts on the reverse. Simple conclusion based on viewing Google News 10 times a day every day :).