"Beware the iPhone" - commentary

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 06 February 2007 12:52

IT Industry - Market

Generally the operator, but sometimes the manufacturer for caving into the operator's request.

If you think people have a strong attachment to handset brands such as Nokia or LG, you obviously haven't talked to an Apple customer lately. By and large, they are rusted on. I'm not going to get into the argument about whether that's deserved or not, but they've been waiting for years for a phone from Apple.

And I mean years - it goes back to the 1990s and the now-defunct Newton MessagePad. I seem to remember Mac pundit and former Apple employee Guy Kawasaki floating the idea of combining a MessagePad and a cell phone soon after Apple's PDA was launched. Admittedly, not all Apple customers have been around that long, but believe me, people want the iPhone and they are ready to pay for it.

The 'walled garden' failed with WAP, and it will fail with mobile Internet. The power has shifted from the carriers, however much they try to deny it. Brands such Google and, yes, Apple are too strong.

All the carriers have left is the power to subsidise handsets (if you can get a close-enough phone at a cut price, you won't spend hundreds more to get the exact one you wanted), and Apple's apparent preparedness to do exclusive deals with just one of them in each geography.

When ARCchart suggested Apple's strong brand image could put operators in a position where they "will be judged on their ability to act as an effective bit pipe," they hit the nail on the head. Because that's exactly what we want from our carriers: reliable, fast cheap transport of bits between our phones and whatever or whoever we're trying to communicate with, whenever and wherever we want. Number portability makes it easy to go elsewhere, and customers will vote with their feet if carriers don't deliver.