Stan Beer
Thursday, 31 January 2008 05:44
Business IT -
Technology
Page 1 of 2
The coming 11 months will see Apple's landmark smartphone product the iPhone enter new markets around the world and probably with a new generation of the product. Apple will be trying its heart out to meet its stated objective of selling 10 million iPhones in 2008 to capture 1% of the global market. Most analysts agree that in order to do that iPhone 2.0 will need features not present in the current model, so what are they? Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has already provided most of the answers.
Before we go any further, let's state up front
what 10 million iPhones sold by the end of 2008 means because there
appears to be a lot of disagreement among analysts and Apple fans.
At Macworld 2007, Steve Jobs stated that the global market was 1
billion cellphones a year and that Apple wanted to get 1% of it by the
end of 2008 and sell 10 million iPhones. By any reasonable definition,
that means Apple has to sell 10 million iPhones in this calendar year -
not from June 29 2007 until December 31 2008. Actually, 10 million
iPhones sold this year would be somewhat less than 1% anyway because
the cellphone market is now estimated to be 1.25 billion in 2008.
Analysts generally agree that Apple has made a very impressive start to its iPhone sales campaign. One analyst,
Mike Abramsky at RBC Capital
has pointed out that the iPhone sold double the amount of the popular
Motorola Razr in the first six months after its launch. However, the
next 12 months are what really count and analysts are less certain as
to whether Apple can maintain its initial momentum.
The fact that Apple dropped the price of the 8GB iPhone by a whopping
$200 and scrapped the 4GB model within three months of its release
caused enormous concern amongst both fans and market analysts. Most
analysts took it as a sign that sales were slower than Apple would have
liked. More recently concerns have been expressed about the discrepancy
between iPhone signups to carriers and the actual number of handsets
shipped, suggesting a build-up of retail inventory, a grey market of
unlocked phones or combination of both.
Despite all these concerns, the general feeling among analysts is that
Apple will be able to get over the 10 million iPhones in 2008 line
through the combination of entering new markets and the release of the
next generation model.
Steve Jobs himself said at Macworld 2007 that a 3G model was planned
and clearly this will be necessary for markets like Europe and Asia
where 3G is widely used. However, four months ago during an
interview with ITnews Steve Wozniak revealed among others, one glaring deficiency that needs to be addressed in the next model iPhone.
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