Its been two years since the iPhone has launched. To a lot of people its been a stupendous success. In this two part series I am going to examine the other side of the coin. The failures of the iPhone and they are (surprisingly) quite a lot … This part will look at the iPhone and the next one will look to see if the Pre can correct them.
Why am I writing this post now, Well when the iPhone launched I was sure that Apple would dominate this market. I had seen the future and I wholeheartedly welcomed my “i” overlords. I happily got an iPhone(only) last year (more on that later) and planned to get it back to India and unlock and use it, when I ran into the “roadblock”. I had upgraded to 2.2.1 and that is not unlock-able. Thus I spend my days carrying a cheap Samsung phone hoping that one day the iPhone hack will make its magical appearance. At the same time I was asked by a bunch of people on what phone to buy, I wholeheartedly recommended the iPhone. For various reasons most of those people did not end up buying the iPhone and settled on something else. Not only was this surprising but also this is tragic considering that the iPhone probably is the best product out there and the better product should win.
Looking at some of the market share numbers we can see the disappointing trends (if you are an iPhone fan). First the curve actually outsold the iPhone 3G in the first quarter of this year. And even worse three of the top 4 are RIM phones which sucks for Apple which has only one phone. This is on top of other bad news like the fact that the global market share is even lower. Please note that this may be above Apples internal projections. But that does not take into account the opportunity “loss” that Apple has faced.
So lets look at the problems . The biggest issue with the iPhone is the lack of reach. If you live in the US. You can only get the iPhone on AT&T. Since I had a sweet deal on Sprint. I waited for a year and a half before I could get it. Apple needs to expand to more carriers period. Om already gave up on the iPhone because of AT&T.
If you live outside the US, the problem gets worse. The iPhone is not available in one of the biggest cell phone markets namely China. It is also ridiculously overpriced in India. Japan also has a mixed experience with the iPhone mainly because of the carrier. Phones are global today and Apple should have gone international a lot sooner than after 1 year. A lot of these markets (especially India) are carrier agnostic and Apple should have sold the phone without a carrier.
Next problem: price. The advertised price of 199 dollars (now 99 dollars) may seem tempting. But then the actual cost is way way more. The 30 dollar data plan is 480 bucks more over 2 years than the data plan of any other phone. This is even higher considering the fact that on Sprint I was getting a better data plan for half ! If this was not bad enough, Apples costing for unlocked phones / no commitment phones and international costs (in India the iPhone cost 700 dollars plus at launch and looks like it still costs that much) . This is stupid considering that Apple has successfully sold the iPod touch (which is just an iPhone without a phone) for 230 bucks retail. The cost difference between a no commitment / unlocked iPhone and and iPod touch is just plain unjustifiable.
This agonizes me no end because if Apple had sold the iPhone in India for less than 20000 Rs. It would have a super winner on its hands.
As for the product itself, The iphone has some issues. One is the look. Its not that the look is pretty great but the fact that the look is so uniform. RIM has 10 models of the blackberry and a large number of colors. The iPhone has 2 ! Somehow the thought of all of us having the exact same cellphone is so 1984. This all said and done is a small issue.
Next the radio on the iPhone. People blame the dropped calls on AT&T, but the truth is that the infineon chip that Apple put on the iPhone is not the best and they could have done way way better. This coupled with bad network makes the blackberry a clear winner for the business crowd which values reliability.
The bigger issue though deals with battery life. The iPhone being the first smart phone you really really push has some big battery life issues. You had to make a sacrifice to make the phone last the whole day. In my case I had to turn off push email. Some people turn off 3G. I never once listened to music on my iPhone for fear of draining the battery. I never had that problem with the ipod touch. This is where RIM wins hands down. A business customer would value reliability over better product any day. The battery life problems get worse because Apple does not allow you to have a removable battery. Thus you either need a charger everywhere you go on rely on so called “elegant solutions” like the Richard Solo backup battery which is really just a hack. A little bit of pragmatism here would have served Apple and more importantly its users very well.
Also minor problems like the lack of copy paste started being a big issue with the flowering of many apps on the app store which just helped you get things done. Apples control issues and the lack of a file system also exacerbated this problem. Technically the lack of multi tasking really starts sucking. Why ? Ironically, its because the app store is so much of a success. Constantly switching apps becomes cumbersome. For example, I keep switching between the email app and facebook app as I get comments on my status. This is slow and cumbersome. The lack of backgrounding and the delay in push notifications means that I cannot have a basic app like IM on my mobile. But considering that no one else has an app ecosystem quite like Apple means that this has not really affected sales. Also the app store approval process means that Apple has alienated their own developers. Sure they will take anything right now as they have no alternatives. But Apple has ensured that its top assets are available to be sniped by competitors. The appstore’s bad publicity also ensures that Apple is always in the news for the wrong reasons. If you ask me, Apple should have implemented post filtering instead of pre filtering. They were forced to do post filtering with the expensive app and the fart apps anyway. Making it post filtered allows the people to decide instead of some filterer at Apple.
So what does this do . Basically Apple has ensured that it has a niche success on its hands. This is bad, Because the iPhone is not a niche product, it should have completely dominated the market by now. And worse, Apple has not made any move to correct this situation with the 3GS. The biggest problems namely availability and pricing still remain problems. The iPhone has not embraced the unlocking community (an easy way to get the iPhone in the hands of more people)
That is why I have hope in the dark knight. The pre !
More on that in the next post !
