“Apple is slated to come out with a new phone. Reports say that it will have a slide-out keyboard, 4GB or 8GB of storage, and work on CDMA or GSM cellular networks. It will start at $249 before subscription rebates,” Michael Kanellos writes for CNET. “And it will largely fail.”
“Initially, of course, it won’t look that way at all. As with any Apple product release, it will be ushered into the world on a wave of obligatory gushing,” Kanellos writes.
“Sales for the phone will skyrocket initially. However, things will calm down, and the Apple phone will take its place on the shelves with the random video cameras, cell phones, wireless routers and other would-be hits,” Kanellos writes. “Why won’t the Apple phone succeed? It will be a great piece of hardware that, if I wasn’t the cheapest man in North America, I might buy. The entire strategy, however, is based on what I call ‘iPod magic.’ Apple succeeded with the iPod, the theory goes. Therefore, they can break into other categories and turn them upside down.”
“But the iPod looks like it may turn out to be a non-repeatable experience. Look at the historical record. When the iPod emerged in late 2001, it solved some major problems with MP3 players,” Kanellos writes. “Unfortunately for Apple, problems like that don’t exist in the handset business. Cell phones aren’t clunky, inadequate devices. Instead, they are pretty good. Really good.”
Fans of insipid blather can read the full article here.
The phones that the vast majority of people have today suck. Kanellos’ amazingly incongruous point that they call the Blackberry the “Crackberry,” so it must be good and therefore nobody will want the iPhone, could only have any chance of working if: a) it actually is good and b) if the vast majority of people have Blackberry smart phones, which they don’t. Kanellos also thinks that because Apple hasn’t sold 100 million Mac minis that the iPhone will be a failure. No, really, he does. With that kind of “logic” in play who needs nonsense?
While a requiem for vapor is yet another interesting way to waste bandwidth, we’ll wait for the product to actually be released before we comment further, thanks. In the meantime, you can bet your Mac that Kanellos’ article has been iCal’ed here at MDN for future reference.
