iPhone Is The Business

by Eric March on April 4, 2008 at 12:13 am

You know it. I know it. That’s why we’re here, right? That whole iPhone/iPod Touch experience that sucked us in and held us there. Apple has gone and showed the mobile market how a phone should be done — and now the numbers are in that reflect that. According to the latest ChangeWave consumer smartphone industry survey, a whopping 79% of 3,597 people surveyed are “very satisfied” with their iPhones. That’s 4 out of 5 people, which, by an interesting coincidence, also happens to be the number of dentists who recommend chewing Trident sugarless gum. Compare that to Blackberry users, of whom only 54% give the same thumbs up. (The other 46% were no doubt screaming “Outages! I hate outages!” while yanking out tufts of their hair — or other people’s hair.)

The smartphone market is still dominated by the Crackberry, which sits at 42% market share, while Palm — poor, once-proud Palm — continues their slide into irrelevance at 14%. However, iPhone is still gaining a great deal of momentum, and is continuing to gain converts. From its initial market penetration of 4% last June, it has managed to more than double its market share to 9% — 3% of that since January alone — and is almost within range to stomp all over Palm. (This probably won’t be necessary however, since Palm is rapidly losing consciousness anyway, having lost two percentage points in the last three months alone.) I myself went through three Treo models until the iPhone’s sexy wiles finally charmed their way onto my desk, unceremoniously dumping my Treo 750 on to the open market. Even my wife is finally getting rid of her Treo 650 — the most solid and reliable of the Treos, which used to be my first smartphone — as she anticipates the arrival of her 16 gig iPhone next week. I even got rid of my beloved Axim X50v PDA — the pinnacle of handheld technology — because even it mostly paled in comparison. (Okay, I miss the VGA screen.) In just a few short months, my desk has gone from bearing a Dell PDA, two Palm smartphones, and an iPod Video, to having an iPod Touch and two iPhones. Indeed, Apple products has invaded our once PocketPC-and-PalmOS-laden home, and we honestly couldn’t be happier about it.

The survey further found that 35% of people who planned to buy a smartphone in the next few months have already decided that it will be an iPhone — an increase of 12% over a similar survey conducted in January. The SDK has a lot to do with that increase, with 1 in 10 respondents stating that they are now more likely to purchase an iPhone now that there’s a smorgasbord of new software on the way. The iPhone as it was last year was a fantastic device and an amazing user experience, but it was limited. The iPhone of today, with an SDK released and no end in sight to the number of developers clamoring for a spot in the App Store, now has unlimited potential — like any good smartphone should — and that is a huge boon to its street cred.

With the gains in market share the iPhone has made and continues to make, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it become a credible threat to Crackberry and Windows Mobile devices. If Apple dumps that lame duck Yahoo! Push mail and opts for something more robust that actually works, I expect RIM junkies wouldn’t really have any excuses left to stick with their little marble-toting mailboxes — except maybe the physical keyboard which, let’s be honest, is still a draw for some. Even I still prefer a real keyboard to a virtual, but the tradeoff made with the iPhone has really made the sacrifice worthwhile.

The only real threat I see on the horizon for Apple is the big G. Android does provide something Apple doesn’t: An open architecture that anyone can develop anything for, and it does it with an operating system that appears to be solid and functional and a UI that’s slick. But perhaps not slick enough.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: It’s going to be a very interesting year.

(Source: MacWorld)

2 Responses to “iPhone Is The Business”

Jody Mitoma said:

April 4th, 2008 at 11:17 pm

This was an excellent read, Eric. (or, should I say listen - thanks to Odiogo. )
Eric March said:

April 5th, 2008 at 12:24 am

Thanks. I had a whole thing to type out here, but I’ve decided I’m just going to turn it into an Op/Ed.