The True Significance of Apple’s iPhone

Even before Apple released its iPhone, fans and foes were busily blogging the pros and cons of the newest “need-to-have” gadget. 

The cynics will tell you that it’s not really a great phone, the OS is too big, the memory too small, the lock-in with AT&T abhorable and the inability to install your own applications a direct attack on consumer choice!

These objections are not details, but they seem to have lost sight of the bigger picture. When technologies reach a sufficient level of maturity (internet, mobile telephony, digital music), the market is no longer driven by the first movers and early innovators but by the majority of consumers.  The majority has little interest in the “engine-under-the-hood”, they just want the product to be intuitive and easy to use.  It is in this respect that the iPhone really raised the bar for mobile phone manufacturers.

This is of course has been the trademark of Apple’s products since the early 80’s: the Macintosh, the iPod, the iPhone. None had spectacular new technologies. All had spectacular better interfaces.

Why is this of such importance?  Won’t people just trade in their clunky and hard to use old phone with an iPhone (or iPhone-like clones), but nothing significantly will change?  Not so. While younger geeks have surfed, blogged, watched TV, and listened to music on their phones for a long time, the size of this techno-happy segment was never large enough to mean much for business.

There are over 220 million mobile phones in the US, over 2.5 billion mobile phones worldwide. Rather than just “earpieces” for phone calls, these devices will become screens with consumer eyeballs tuned into them for watching TV, mobile video, mobile coupons, advertising (localized and personalized, of course), e-books, price comparisons, and shopping.

And thanks to the user-friendly interface first introduced by Apple, moms & dads, grandparents, and technophobes will all do it.

Move over clunky desktops and laptops. The internet is truly mobile and airborne now!