Earth to Apple, Earth to Jobs: You're not listening

By Stan Beer
Wednesday, 16 January 2008 05:57

Opinion and Analysis

At Macworld 2008, Steve Jobs once again strutted across the stage like a prize peacock, this time claiming to have learned from past mistakes by listening to Apple customers. Well if Apple and its boss have indeed been listening to their customers they have a funny way of showing it because customers are still waiting for their two most requested products.

Ever since Apple unveiled its very nice MacBook in May 2006 and Jobs created a sensation when he unveiled the revolutionary iPhone 12 months ago at Macworld 2007, consumers have been voicing two desires: Can we have a small form factor ultra-portable notebook and a 3G iPhone please? To date, their requests have been ignored.

Let's start with the iPhone. At Macworld 2007, Jobs promised on stage that a 3G iPhone would be coming to follow up on the company's inexplicable decision to go to market with a slow 2.5G EDGE network version. Many of us thought that a 3G iPhone was a certainty to be unveiled when Apple's new star product was released in Europe last November. Not so and now there are some reports of sluggish sales in markets outside the US where 3G networks are ubiquitous - notably in the UK.

According to Apple, the company has sold 4 million iPhones in its first 200 days. For any other company, this would be a phenomenal figure. However, at Macworld 2007 Jobs envisioned sales of 10 million units in the first year, so Apple has some work to do over the next 165 days. It is beginning to look as though Apple has to release a 3G iPhone very soon in order to move 10 million units in the first 12 months. (Correction: Jobs actually said ten million iPhones by the end of 2008. However, he did say Apple wanted to get 1% of the 1 billion annual mobile phones market, which would mean that Apple would have to sell ten million iPhones in a year.)

The big question of course is why hasn't Apple brought a 3G iPhone to market yet? The company obviously knows the importance of having a product that can at least meet the expectations of the market. Across Europe and the rest of the developed world 3G has become a baseline standard. Yet 12 months on and another Macworld later, Jobs still doesn't have a 3G iPhone to put on display.