The massive FUD campaign against Apple’s iPhone ramps up

17 years ago

As I fully expected, the Apple iPhone hit pieces have begun. These articles will attempt to spread Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) for the next six months leading up to Apple’s first shipment of iPhones and well beyond that date.

If you thought that iPod and iTunes was subject to FUD, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet, my friends. You’ll have to look to the Mac to find a threat of such magnitude that inspired such a FUD campaign. The reason for such a campaign against iPhone? Money. Lots and lots of money and the fear of losing a good portion of it to Apple.

You can call me conspiratorial. You can call me a crackpot. Call me whatever you like, but I will be proven right soon enough.

You will see articles that go way beyond legitimate reviews that will attempt to call into question every aspect of Apple’s iPhone, attacking everything from battery life, the type of battery, fingerprints on the screen, its Mac OS X operating system, and the type of network technology the first iPhone will employ (quad-band GSM) while failing to mention that Jobs stated that Apple plans 3G iPhones in the future. These articles will harp on the prices Apple plans to charge for the iPhone. They’ll claim the soft keyboard is difficult to use. They’ll make up even more things and they’ll find quotes from people who are supposedly not impressed with the device. I guarantee it.

Apple’s target of selling 10 million iPhones, or 1% of the total market, in the first year is too low, far too conservative. Apple’s iPhone user interface (UI) is far too advanced and too well-protected by patents (granted and under review) to be ripped off successfully. It will change the mobile device market in radical ways. I am, if anything, understating the havoc iPhone will cause.

The other phone makers, the other mobile device makers, and the other makers of so-called “smartphone” software understand the massive threat Apple’s iPhone poses. They have no recourse but to start up the FUD campaign, desperately hoping to slow Apple’s assault on the market. There is so much money at stake that things will get very nasty, very quickly.

The chits will be called in and the articles will get written. It’s already started.

So, keep this in mind whenever you read about Apple’s iPhone and you see an article slanted against the iPhone: the real Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt is being felt by all of the companies that Apple just humiliated yesterday. They are very scared and rightfully so.

SteveJack is a long-time Macintosh user, web designer, multimedia producer and a regular contributor to the MacDailyNews Opinion section.