The iPhone has been hailed as a ground-breaking wonder. And dismissed as a mediocre product. It's clearly innovative--and also quite flawed. People will clamor for one--unless they decide not to. And competitors are already coming up with iPhone killers.
Not bad for a product that hasn't even shipped yet.
It's been a month since Steve Jobs first introduced the iPhone during Macworld Expo. All that we know about the mobile device comes from Jobs' two-hour keynote, a post-keynote briefing with Apple executives, and whatever iPhone information is posted on Apple's Web site. And yet, that hasn't stopped a flood of commentary on why the iPhone will succeed or flounder, what its flaws may or may not be, and what Apple needs to change about a device that isn't even in the hands of one user yet.
It's easy to understand the outpouring of coverage--since its January unveiling, the iPhone has piqued the interest of people like no product since the iPod. Yet, with the iPhone still four months away from its expected June 2007 ship date, there's very little pundits can add about the phone's features and performance. So what you wind up with is a lot of speculation--and all too often, that speculation turns into accepted fact.
A Reality Check
To add some measure of a reality check to all this iPhone pondering, we're taking a closer look at some of the more frequently asserted opinions to see which ones provide more noise than signal.
Closed system? Users of traditional smartphones often add third-party apps to the devices that augment the phone's features--everything from utilities to document management tools. But some analysts seem to be interpreting Apple's reticence to talk about third-party opportunities as a sign that developers will be shut out of the iPhone system.
"With a Palm or Symbian device you can add applications whenever you want and that's important to some people," said Avi Greengart, principal analyst for mobile devices at Current Analysis. "The iPhone doesn't have the ability to add third-party applications."
However, it's not clear that's necessarily the case. Jobs did tell the New York Times that Apple would "define everything that is on the phone." But that's not the same thing as preventing third-party developers from creating any sort of iPhone add-on.
"Apple has never said they would not open it up to the development community," noted Tim Bajarin, president of high-tech consulting firm Creative Strategies.
Instead, what Apple might do is keep a tight lid on the iPhone through its initial launch, giving developers more opportunities as the phone gains greater footing. "If you think about it from a strategic standpoint with them being in control of the applications in the early stages they can control how the applications are written, but once the process is solid, they can open it up to developers," Bajarin said.
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