Have recent missteps by Apple opened the door for a competitor in the cool-phone sweepstakes?
With a pun-intended headline, Apple getting a seedy image, The Chicago Sun-Times carried a story last week calling the iPhone “the Lindsay Lohan of technology.”
What did Apple do to deserve such a moniker? It rendered useless phones that had been hacked to release the AT&T; SIM lock and at the same time, it killed third-party applications that were developed for the device.
Last week, it also happened that Verizon released its line-up of new devices for Christmas, including two touch screen devices from LG, the Venus and Voyager. The Voyager appears to have incorporated some of the iPhone “look” but it adds a supplementary QWERTY keyboard and it accepts micro-SD supplementary storage.
The Wall Street Journal wrote about the trendiness of handsets – making a fashion statement with your cell-phone. Apple iPhone pricing is creating a discontinuity, possibly allowing carriers south of the border to decrease their up-front subsidies if the demand is sufficient for the device itself.
Alternatively, the price of the iPhone, coupled with Apple’s arrogance and disdain for open third party applications may open a crack in the market for alternate providers of cool devices. I’m not talking about a device that has to settle for “just as good as a Xerox” status. I’m looking for one that looks at the shortcomings of the iPhone and blows right past.
Don’t get me wrong – the window of opportunity hasn’t been opened wide, but it seems to me that there is a sliver, a space in the market for other participants to elbow aside Apple’s impersonations of one of these Hollywood starlets with more money than common sense.
Much has been made of Apple’s success in selling 1 million units in its first 74 days. It was a remarkable product launch. Still, some perspective is required. For example, Nokia sells more than a million phones every day. There will be about a billion phones sold in the world this year – Apple hopes to achieve about 1% share. Isn’t it possible that some other device manufacturer can afford to assign some R&D; and industrial design to achieve the elusive cool factor?
We’re coming into the season that should be most determinant in bonus payments in the wireless industry. Historically, the Canadian wireless market sees about 40% of the year’s net additions in the 4th quarter.
What kinds of devices are going to find their way onto Santa’s gift lists?