The iPhone is a great device and it for sure has changed the landscape of smart phones. The original idea, however, has not invented by Apple: I saw a design study of a mobile phone years ago and found it great – unfortunately cannot proof this right now. When I saw the iPhone for the first time, I thought: finally someone picked up this idea and made a real product out of it. Well the same thing happened decades ago with the Macintosh that used ideas from other parties – anyway ;-)
One thing I am wondering about for a longer time is the widespread perception that Apple is the market leader of cell phones. This has even been expressed by more than one professor in lectures ;-) However, it is by far not true! According to this source, the iPhone has a market share of about 1% which is impressive as two years ago it only had 0.3% and Apple is a newcomer in the cell phone market. Cell phone market, yes, but actually in the sub segment smart phones where it certainly plays an important role behind RIM in terms of market share and technology leadership – not taking into account that one cannot change the battery in this super duper device which is a confession of failure in the 21st century.
So, how is it possible that most people perceive the iPhone as THE cell phone? Because “very one” owns an iPod – according to an unofficial survey in one of my classes – and so the Apple brand is ubiquitous? Because we are only in certain circles with somehow rich people – once an employee from DouaneReade asked me what I paid for my BlackBerry and was shocked from the price – who can pay and “need” this gadget. Whatever, Apple is hype and part of this is viral online marketing by Apple disciples: if you google for “iPhone” you get about 321,000,000 hits, for the true market leader, “Nokia”, you get 367,000,000 which is truly surprising when you take into consideration how long Nokia is in the cell phone business. The iPhone attracts much more and people just talk about it online like crazy and thus push it further and further in terms of market share but probably also in our perception.
2 comments:
Well, not sure about the others, but THIS professor was talking about mobile internet/web browsing, not cell phone market share. And referring to the huge change iPhone has engendered in terms of usage. Easy to use interface plus all you can eat pricing model plus useful, linked together feature sets = massive usage by iPhone owners of mobile browsing capabilities. It's the number one phone in terms of platforms showing up in web logs....
When is this system to record one's whole life finally available, I once heard about in the past? So one does not have to rely on a fading memory ;-)
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