Yesterday brought the second release of the historic Apple iPhone. Steve Jobs dropped the highly-anticipated iPhone 3G bomb at WWDC 2008 in San Francisco to the joy of Apple fans worldwide. But after watching Jobs’ keynote, several features seem to hint toward an early release to combat the buzz surrounding Android.
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eBay now has an application developed for the iPhone platform. An interesting point to note is that eBay is also one of the strongest companies taking part in the Open Handset Alliance, Android’s backing organization. Although the application for the iPhone did look fairly impressive, imagine such feature embedded right on your home screen, where you could access your current watched items, bids and selling item with no less than a flick of your finger - no need to even open an application. And all this wonderful data would be delivered quickly and efficiently over WiMax, 3G, WiFi or even EDGE, if necessary.
While no one can tell for sure if Jobs is feeling pressure from the imminent release of Android handhelds, it’s quite certain that Android phones will not go overlooked once they are released. Within a year, Apple will be stuck with one phone, while Android - much like Blackberry and Windows Mobile - will have phones in all shapes and sizes - including touchscreen.
The pressure is on, and Apple will be feeling it soon enough when they begin to struggle over market share between the many competitors. Not only will Android have different shapes and sizes as far as phones, but also different features including all the features of the iPhone plus real keypads, better cameras, video conferencing, WiMax, improved 3G versions and countless other features.
So what do you think? Is Apple feeling the pressure from Android, and if so, why? What features do you think an Android handset could include that would trounce the iPhone 3G?
June 10th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
[solely talking about the US market as I have no clue what goes on outside] I think it’s the opposite: I think Android developers and hardware makers should be feeling the pressure to actually put something out to compete before Apple’s iPhone snowballs and walks away with the consumer smartphone market. (Much like what it has done with its iPod)
For most individuals, the iPhone will do more than what they need. The $199 price (despite the hidden costs; $30 data plan, 2-yr contract) and A-GPS (most people probably don’t know the difference between GPS and A-GPS and think they’ll be able to ditch or supplant dedicated GPS units). As someone who has been eagerly waiting for Android, there has been no hardware announced and only a couple of demonstrations, which did not hit really mainstream websites or press media. No one really knows about Android except for “techie” types, but everyone knows Apple’s iPhone and have been eying one for the past year.
If no hardware or concrete details about Android handsets are out soon, Android will be introduced into a market where many people will be on their 2-yr iPhone contracts with AT&T. The only people left are holdouts on Verizon, Sprint, or T-Mobile who refuse to go to AT&T, which is the US’ largest mobile carrier. Still, with a few compelling features and low $199 price, iPhone will probably draw many people–and I have no doubt that Apple will hit its 10 million units in 2008 goal easily.
June 10th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
I forgot to add some data I saw at TGDaily (http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/content-view-37843-118.html)
The iPhone is the #2 smartphone maker in the US and #3 worldwide. Its numbers are still much lower than Nokia’s and RIM’s. I’m not sure how it compares to the WinMo market as it is fragmented with many different manufacturers. Nokia and RIM, IIRC, are not part of the OHA. Even if many of the traditionally WinMo makers switch to Android, I’m not sure they’ll be able to surpass Apple’s numbers. To use the iPod analogy again, there were many MP3 players on the market before the iPod came out. Some were quite good and did well even as the iPod languished in its first 2 years on the market. However, we all know the outcome as it is today after Apple made their iPods mac and pc compatible, lowered their prices, and introduced iTunes and the iTunes store. Sometimes, numbers and the user base matter no mater how good a platform is (to open another can of worms: think of OSX vs Windows, I’ll admit many have been moving to OSX, but it’s just a drop in the ocean).
June 13th, 2008 at 8:03 am
Right on the money. I would not be surprised if Apple was knocked off their high-and-mighty throne after this.