Comments on: Business Week and Michael Arrington are Wrong

By: Apple in Control « Crastinate

Apple in Control « Crastinate — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:15:09 +0000

[...] Posted June 17, 2008 I’ve gotten a lot of flack for my recent “iphone bashing” post. Opposed to what people thought I was saying, I was not bashing the iPhone at all. It is, by far, [...]

By: Congratulation Tiger « Crastinate

Congratulation Tiger « Crastinate — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 21:41:49 +0000

[...] perfect example is the Apple fanboys who aren’t willing to acknowledge that Apple is going to have an extremely hard time competing against RIM in the business mobile [...]

By: Ely Rosenstock

Ely Rosenstock — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:54:19 +0000

Kate – It’s a good point. But that only enhances the consumer market. Business pricing may be very different. These cheaper rates, of which I wasn’t aware were finalized, do help the iPhone a lot. My point, I think, still stands. Consumer market – Apple is going to be a monster in the next couple years. Business market – Apple will be a player, but won’t come close to RIM’s market share.

By: Kate

Kate — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:41:35 +0000

Ely- when you predict the iPhone making less of a dent in marketshare abroad are you taking into consideration that the units will be subsidized at a much higher rate overseas than they are here? I think they will be free in Spain when you sign up for a new contract and a pound in England (although you have to sign an 18 month contract in the UK which is practically unheard of there).

By: Bobby Troina

Bobby Troina — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:35:46 +0000

Ha ha. What a funny blog. I can hardly wait to send it back to you in a year to remind you how wrong your predictions were. See you in 2009!

By: Ely Rosenstock

Ely Rosenstock — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:41:33 +0000

Cobas, I agree with you regarding the consumer mobile device market. But the impact, I believe, will be much greater in the US than internationally. With the dominance of Nokia outside the US, Apple will have a harder time making inroads into those markets.

Also, I didn’t even mention in the post about the lack of carrier choices. Once the iPhone can be used on all carriers, than we might see some significant market share for Apple outside the US. Until then, the iPhone’s impact will mainly be in the luxury phone consumer market in the US. Significant, yes. As big of a deal as everyone is making it, no.

By: Ely Rosenstock

Ely Rosenstock — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:36:28 +0000

Barry, I think lots of people would agree with you. Apple fanboys are having too much sway in these market share predictions.

By: Cobas

Cobas — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:28:36 +0000

You’re right – the iPhone won’t make a tremendous dent in the business sector, but that’s probably not the market segment they were aiming for anyway.

At its heart, the iPhone is an entertainment device. Its touch screen was a matter of necessity, not coolness. It was designed to allow for movie watching and full-screen websurfing in a compact handset. Very few businesses are going to pony up the cash for you to store 16GB of Dave Matthews mumbling incoherently.

To that extent it makes perfect sense for Apple to be a looming threat in the mobile device market, although I’d consider them to be a much bigger threat to Motorola and Nokia than I would to RIM.

That said, lots of people I know have BlackBerries or because they like being able to e-mail/surf the web/call people from one device; not because their place of employment shackled them with one. It is THOSE people that Apple is almost guaranteed to capture. While typing on the touchscreen keyboard is painful (for me), I am told it is easy to get used to and for many people the predictive text and auto-correct system allows them to type faster than on typical handheld keyboards.

By: Barry

Barry — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:21:24 +0000

I was looking forward to the new iPhone as a possible replacement for my aging Blackberry 8700. So I tried typing an email on my co-worker’s iPhone. It’s a nightmare…you have to watch carefully where your fingers are going, and even then it’s all too easy to make mistakes. The built-in auto-correct system makes things marginally better, but it cemented my decision – if you are serious about composing emails on your PDA, a touch-screen is not the way to go. With the new Blackberry Bold coming out with plenty of multimedia features for the long plane ride, I see little reason to consider the new iPhone for business.