It’s not a phone
Seems to me that this post about the iPhone at Investor Village is right on point. You should read the whole thing, but here’s a key bit:
When Apple first started talking about the desktop computer as our digital hub, they weren’t kidding. And the mobile phone companies weren’t listening. Instead of seeing the mobile phone as an extension of the desktop computer, they saw it as a stand alone device, precisely because they weren’t in the computer business. (It’s that well known business issue of knowing what business you’re really in.) If anything, Apple has the required expertise in this market as opposed to the fanciful notion that they are new and inexperienced in the monstrous wireless market.The activation of the iPhone is an example of the kind of infrastructure that Apple has developed. We plug our iPods into a dock, sync our music and contacts, and update the software. The iPhone is just an iPod that makes phone calls, so it didn’t require a stroke of genius to see that the iPhone activation could be easy and painless with iTunes plus an Apple ID.
Putting key pieces into place until the whole becomes more than the sum of the parts has been an Apple theme for quite some time. We saw Sound Jam evolve into iTunes for ripping, then the iPod, then the iTunes Store. The rest of the industry has nothing to compare to this. Think about it. Every time you charge your iPhone, iTunes has the opportunity to check the software and install fixes and new features.
This elegant, evolving infrastructure should also scare the hell out of Apple’s competitors.
Mobile phone companies have been building wireless analogues to the traditional telephone. They have added features here and there, and have made token stabs at connecting users to the internet, but they were basically designing phones. Apple did something different: they gave us a device that is meant to serve as a conduit to our digital lives, to the entertainment and information we want with us all the time, the things that are relevant to us, that identify us as us. And, oh yeah… it also, if you’re interested, makes phone calls.
In creating this device, Apple not only outflanked the mobile phone makers, they blew the doors off the PDA makers in usability and integration. Finally, a mobile device has the kind of transparent layering of technology that many people crave. I want my movies, music, contacts, lists, reference sources, address book and the rest of my knowledge cloud available at all times, and I don’t want to think about how to find it, collect it, or access it.
This isn’t a phone. If you think that it’s a phone and you evaluate it on that basis, you will miss the bigger picture. This is a new kind of device, and it hints at a new way of thinking about and interacting with the digital world.
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