“Every few days, another pundit looks at the iPhone and figures out why it won’t succeed. Whether it’s missing out on the ‘industry-standard’ functionality of a smartphone or using a slow network standard, everyone wants to be the person who best determines why this time Apple will flop on its face,” Pete Mortensen blogs for Wired.
“The latest to weigh in is Taesik Yoon of Forbes, who argues that Apple’s got a bigger challenge entering the mature mobile phone market than they did with MP3 players and the iPod. Worse, the high price will dissuade people from buying, and the Cingular deal will totally flatten the possible market. The 10 million iPhones sold by 2008? Not a prayer,” Mortensen writes.
Mortensen writes, “And I still don’t buy it… First and foremost, we don’t have any idea which iPhones Apple intends to sell 10 million of, nor how much they’re going to cost… Secondly, the iPhone will be a global product… Third, I think that the iPhone constitutes an entry in a market other than smartphones. Instead, it’s Apple going after the multimedia phone market, which is incredibly immature and unsatisfying. The LG Chocolate is maybe the best product in this market, and anyone who has ever used it can tell you just why it poses no threat to either the iPod or the iPhone.”
Related article: Chocolate Cellphone Only Looks Sweet; Its Design Is Flawed – Walt Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, August 03, 2006
Mortensen continues, “I think you might find that Apple is under-selling the device with their 10 million figure.”
Full article here.
Related articles:
Getting ready for Apple iPhone: How to get out of your 2-year cellphone contract – March 13, 2007
Apple’s marketing machine does it again: iPhone generates $400 million in free publicity – March 10, 2007
Analyst: Apple’s iPhone has Palm ‘shaking in their sandals’ – March 09, 2007
Which company is most at risk from Apple’s looming iPhone onslaught? – March 04, 2007
Morgan Stanley reiterates Apple ‘buy’ – says market is underestimating iPhone demand – March 01, 2007
Apple’s 10 million iPhone sales target for 2008 would surpass most other smart phone sales – March 01, 2007
Apple COO Tim Cook: iPhone is a revolutionary product; you get what you pay for – February 28, 2007
How will vehicle makers integrate Apple’s iPhone? – February 28, 2007
Apple COO Tim Cook: iPhone on track for June launch – February 27, 2007
Goldman Sachs: 4 reasons to be bullish on Apple’s iPhone – February 26, 2007
Apple airs iPhone teaser ad during Oscars – February 25, 2007
Apple preps 3G iPhone model for Europe – February 25, 2007
The once-mighty Palm Inc. doomed to decline and failure – thanks to Apple’s iPhone – February 23, 2007
Palm CEO can’t stop talking about Apple iPhone – February 19, 2007
How Steve Jobs played hardball in iPhone deal with AT&T (Cingular) – February 17, 2007
Digit takes a closer look at Apple’s iPhone – February 14, 2007
Microsoft caught off-guard, beaten badly by Apple’s iPhone innovations – February 13, 2007
Apple’s soon-to-be iPhone rivals sound just like iPod rivals circa 2001 – February 01, 2007
How Verizon blew the Apple iPhone deal – January 29, 2007
O2, Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile battle for exclusive rights to Apple iPhone in UK – January 26, 2007
Rogers to offer Apple iPhone exclusively in Canada – January 25, 2007
Research in Motion downgraded due to Apple iPhone competition – January 23, 2007
Ihnatko: Hands-on with Apple’s iPhone (which runs Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard) – January 18, 2007
Microsoft CEO Ballmer laughs at Apple iPhone – January 17, 2007
RealMoney: Apple just blew up the whole damn mobile-phone supply chain with its new iPhone – January 11, 2007
eWeek: Apple iPhone fallout: ‘They must be crying in Nokia-ville and other telephony towns today’ – January 10, 2007
Jefferies downgrades Motorola on fears of market share loss to Apple iPhone – January 10, 2007
The massive FUD campaign against Apple’s iPhone ramps up – January 10, 2007
Time: ‘iPhone could crush cell phone market pitilessly beneath the weight of its own superiority’ – January 09, 2007
Analyst: Apple iPhone should be given its own category – ‘brilliantphone’ – January 09, 2007
Apple debuts iPhone: touchscreen mobile phone + widescreen iPod + Internet communicator – January 09, 2007
Enter the space as a humble man would.
Thirty. Million.
-c
In Steve We Trust
Apple always rounds down and/or bids low. 30 million sounds good and reasonable for 18 months. When people actually see the iPhone in person, then they will run out and buy one. I wanted a Razr after I got to mess with one, and it can’t touch the iPhone with a ten foot pole.
I don’t care how many iPhones are sold, or what the dickheads in Wall St think, as long as the price of AAPL increases.
Reach out and multi-touch someone.
Can you feel me now?
He said they are going to be measuring sales over the period June 07 to June 08. How everyone can keep getting that wrong is baffling. Anyway, in the time I reckon they could sell around 15 million worldwide.
Would you like you multi-touch my monkey?
-d
No capes!
-e
Let your fingers do the talking. (Reminds me of prom night.)
What so many so called analysts fail to realise with Apple is that it’s not solely how many of something they sell or how much market share they have. It’s what portion of the market they have, how profitable they are in it and how their customers are loyal. Other companies have to keep getting new customers to make up for the people they lose, there is no future revenue from them. Any advertising is spent on getting an individual sale. Apple spend x amount on advertising and get a new mac owner or something and chances are they’ll be with them for years to come. They’re highly profitable in all regards hence why even with “only” 10m iPhone sales they’d be sitting pretty no doubt.
Is there a new rule?
-t
10 mill will be reached at the end of 2007 not 2008…
Who started this?
-®
ChrissyOne,
I’d agree with your super-optimistic estimate but for my concern that Apple wouldn’t be able to supply the demand. Hopefully they’ll have parts suppliers ready for just-in-time production ramp-ups. Then we should hopefully see a price drop sooner, rather than later, spurring further demand.
Same trash talk for the iPhone as we heard for the iPod when it was introduced.
Have faith in “His Steveness,” and success shall come to pass.
I definitely think Apple’s only mistake is going to be underestimating the demand. Buyers are not going to be ambivalent about wanting an iPhone, if they want it, they’re going to walk into the store and ask for it by name.
In spite of the real possibility that Cing. is going to be like EVERY other reseller of Apple products, other than Apple itself, and do a really bad job of actually offering the iPhone to it’s walk-in customers, (instead they’ll try and pull people over to their cheaper phones at little or no up front cost). In spite of this inevitability, Apple is going to need another 10 million by this time next year, almost without a doubt.
Do you think the iPod sells ’cause all retailers are totally on-board and offer potential iPod customers lots of useful info. when they walk into the store – uh, no. We just walked into a Wal-mart last week and asked for info. on a Shuffle. The person who came to “help” promptly reported that the entire iPod line was too expensive, and that you needed a uniquely sized headphone jack to use anything except Apple headphones with the Shuffle. We were then shuffled over to the Zune display where all of our too-expensive, and uniquely-sized-headphone-jack worries would be nulled if we bought a Zune.
The iPod succeeds because people already know they want it, the same is already true with the iPhone, and not one has been sold yet – And the enthusiasm isn’t just coming from Mac fans either.
Yeah, Apple is underestimating the demand, but it’ll work out in the long run, they’re going to need time to figure out how they’re going to really attack the market with or without Cing. once the iPhone gets an iPod-like foot hold.
In the near future, people will wonder “did you buy your AAPL stock before or after the iPhone?” because that will be recognized as the ‘Big Tipping Point’ that changed everything.
So mote it be…
@ thetic Ruin
That’s my worry as well. I KNOW they’re going to sell more iPhones than ANYONE expects, and Apple’s biggest production problems in the past have been keeping up with demand. I waited for one of the original G4s, you remember the 450/500mhz Motorola fiasco, right? Anyway, I hope they’ve learned their lessons.
-c
MW: ‘million’
The multimedia phone market is unsatisfying.
The multimedia phone market is unsatisfying.
The multimedia phone market is unsatisfying.
The multimedia phone market is unsatisfying.
The multimedia phone market is unsatisfying.
The multimedia phone market is unsatisfying.
The multimedia phone market is unsatisfying.
The multimedia phone market is unsatisfying.
It will remain unsatisfying as long as “smart” phone manufacturers use Microsoft “technologies” in their products.
I just read Walt Mossberg’s (7 month old) review of the LG Chocolate and compared his findings to my experiences with the Chocolate that my mother-in-law just picked up a week ago. I have to agree with him 100% on everything he had to say about it. What’s worse, in the 7 months since that review was published, no improvements have been made to the product (or at least none that I am aware of), instead Verizon and LG continue to peddle it as if its the hottest thing since sliced bread. I can’t wait for the iPhone to ship, and have purposely held off renewing my phone contract for that very reason. I think the analysts who have predicted the iPhone to be a flop are the same folks who use Zune or Zen as their music players (or the LG Chocolate for that matter).
I agree! I have been living with a company issued Treo 700p now for about a week. I have not used a Smartphone since my Treo 300 died a few years ago. So even though it was no iPhone, I was excited to see how far smartphones had progressed. I am shocked and dismayed at how little the Treo has changed since the 300. I held it up next to the 700p and it is the same thickness, virtually the same size, yet it now has a smaller screen and a more difficult keypad. Now I understand the excitement and WOW factor over the iPhone. It is way more than just a Treo with a touchscreen. They will sell a lot!
ChrissyOne: “That’s my worry as well. I KNOW they’re going to sell more iPhones than ANYONE expects, and Apple’s biggest production problems in the past have been keeping up with demand. I waited for one of the original G4s, you remember the 450/500mhz Motorola fiasco, right? Anyway, I hope they’ve learned their lessons.”
That lesson is wasted in this case. Unlike desktop Macs which must compete using bleeding edge processors (and thus, made Apple completely at the mercy of either IBM or Moto) whose availability might be very constrained or whose fab company was incompetent, there is nothing like that in iPhone. As far as we know, all major components are standard and are widely available. The draw for the iPhone is in the integration, software and design. Thus, assuming that FCC clears it, the big possibility that can cause shortage/delay is either a last minute bug or totally misread demand.
2006 – every corporate executive in the U.S. has a Blackberry.
2008 – every corporate executive in the U.S. has an iPhone.
Watch!