iPhone vs HTC TyTN II: Apple vs Microsoft on new stage

Stan Beer
Sunday, 11 November 2007 16:34

Business IT - Technology

As those poor weather beaten Londoners queued up for a chance to get their very own Apple iPhones a day or two ahead of ordinary consumers last week, I was having a quick play with a 3G HTC TyTN II touch screen phone that a colleague recently picked up from a local 3 shop. Now that I've had a chance to play with both of these devices, I get the feeling that Apple is once again up against Microsoft and history may repeat itself.

As we all know, the iPhone is a breakthrough device that has revolutionised the user experience on smartphones, in a similar manner to what the Mac did for personal computers. We also know that in the coolness stakes you simply can't beat an iPhone or an iPod or a Mac or just about anything else Apple makes.

Like no other company before it or since, Apple led by the charismatic Steve Jobs has succeeded in creating a mystique about the company and its products, resulting in an almost cult-like following of loyal fans willing to pay a premium for its products.  Apple fans are the company's best advertisement. They don't just use their products; they love them and, if you don't, then as far as they're concerned you're an idiot who just doesn't 'get it'.

The iPhone is certainly no exception to the rule. It's a lovely piece of hardware and software all beautifully parcelled up in a neat plug-and-play package - just like the Mac was when it first arrived in 1984 and still is today.

The trouble for Apple is that the Mac got trounced and marginalised by a very hard-nosed, uncool competitor called Microsoft, which didn't even make hardware and whose software, in comparison to Apple's, was in the stone age. With hindsight, we can all see what happened. Apple, like it does today, believed that it could not unbundle its software from its hardware and thus created a walled garden for itself and its users. Microsoft, on the other hand, licensed its software to anybody willing to build computers conforming to an Intel based "industry standard architecture".

Enough of the history lesson and back to the present. The iPhone, like the original Mac, is taking the world by storm. Like the original Mac, the iPhone is expensive. Forget the cover price, think of the real price when you factor in how much Apple is getting out of the 18 month and two-year contracts bundled with the phones. That's fine, you can charge what you like for disruptive technology. However, what do you do when serious competitors arrive on the market?