iPhone 3G - The Birth Of A New Platform
Today is July 11, 2008. It’s the day the iPhone 3G was released into the market. WOW! I’d love to get one of these puppies.
I have a friend who thinks it’s just a bunch of hullaballoo about nothing. He’s missing the point. And maybe the boat. The truth is, the iPhone finally delivers what Bill Gates has been talking about for 10 years, saying how Windows will revolutionize mobile computing. Only Bill never envisioned what Apple has actually accomplished!
When you peel back the coveres, I think Apple is doing onehelluva job turning the iPhone into a HUGE marketing engine.
Most phone makers just sell them through network providers, and that’s that. They compete on new features that are exclusively available through the chosen network provider for a while. But you’re primarily held hostage to whatever the phone vendor and network provider offer. The network providers really don’t add much value; they leave it to the phone vendor, while the phone vendors have never been interested in working with anybody but HUGE CORPORATIONS.
The average consumer today doesn’t know that their cell phone is really a fairly powerful computer. In fact, it’s computing capabilities far exceed the first few generations of IBM PCs. But that’s easy to overlook because they don’t run your typical Windows OS. True, some run Windows Mobile Edition, but they’re a small minority. Most actually run Java. Next on the list I believe is PalmOS, and there are others I forget.
The thing is, it really doesn’t matter. Because you can’t call up your neighborhood programmer and say, “Hey, can you build me an app for my cell phone?” No, that’s a very expensive proposition! I’ve always wondered why that is. Java is Java. In fact, at one point I spent some time trying to figure out how to get a small Java applet downloaded to my Motorola V3. I just don’t get the issue… why is it such a problem?
Well, Apple has just solved that problem! Their newest iPhone/iPod platform (the V2 software) lets anybody download their SDK (a free 1.2GB download from Apple’s site) onto their favorite Mac computer and start developing apps for iPhones and iPods. In case you’re wondering how people would get them onto their computers devices, Apple has solved that problem as well. It’s called their App Store. Anybody can publish the software they built to Apple’s App Store and it’s immediately available to 8 million plus iPhone and iPod V2 users.
And you can even set a price for your app and Apple will charge users and pay you 70%. Now THAT is cool! Ever try to get software published into any kind of mass distribution market that didn’t cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars up front?
Do you think this will work very well? Consider this…
When the iPod was introduced, it was just another “me-too” audio player until people discovered how easy it was to get their favorite tunes onto it from iTunes. No more did you have to rip CDs, grab stuff off of the internet, deal with DRM issues and crappy audio quality, and all that other stuff.
Using iTunes, a few clicks of your mouse is all you need to get exactly what you wanted for a very reasonable price. People showed they’re interested in paying for that level of convenience. Now iTunes is something like the third-largest music vendor in the world, based on sales revenues.
The latest iPhone/iPod V2 platform is going to do that for software and so-called “push” technology. The iPhone is finally going to enable the kinds of things that Bill Gates used to talk about in his Keynote speeches at Comdex, CES, and so many other places 10 years ago! This is what Windows was supposed to allow people to do with hand-held computing devices.
What are the other cell phone vendors going to do that even comes CLOSE to what the new iPhone/iPod platform offers? (The new iPod is not a phone, but it’ll let you dowload and run a large portion of the software that the iPhone will run.)
How long do you think it will be before Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Palm, and others start to open up their development platforms for developers to use FOR FREE?
Do not underestimate the power of GREED that will take hold as teens the world over discover they can make a buck on every copy of a cute new game they create and upload to Apple’s App Store.
All they gotta do is buy a Mac and download Apple’s FREE iPhone/iPod SDK, and they’re good to go.
Friday 11 Jul 2008 | TheToolWiz | Marketing, Programming, iMac, iPhone
