“On April 9, 2007, Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple Inc. announced the sale of the 100 millionth iPod. To say that iPod sales have been anything less than dramatic would be an understatement, and to call the revolutionary iPod anything less than an entire product ecosystem wouldn’t be doing it justice. Between the more than 4,000 accessories to date and the billions in revenue generated by selling proprietary downloads of songs 99 cents at a time on iTunes (and now TV shows, movies, audio books, etc.), Apple has built a nearly flawless business model around the iPod that is the envy of big tech and big media companies alike, and as sales built to record numbers it seemed that the only thing that could slow the iPod’s ascent off the sales forecast charts would be Apple itself,” Brad Kenney writes for IndustryWeek.
“As unlikely as that may seem, it may have happened. Apple co-founder, CEO and chief evangelist Steve Jobs is a charismatic public presence by any account, and his theatrical unveiling of a prototype of the company’s new iPhone at Apple’s Macworld Expo consumer conference this past January was met with near-rapturous outpourings of desire for this new ‘it’ device. However, once the glow of the sneak peek at this new Apple product-to-be wore off, a more sober assessment of the situation revealed that the premature announcement wasn’t as well timed a move as industry watchers are accustomed to expecting from Apple,” Kenney writes.
MacDailyNews Take: Let’s look past Kenney’s transparently sarcastic use of the term “near-rapturous” for a moment; surely Kenney has good reasons why Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ iPhone announcement wasn’t “well-timed,” right?
Kenney continues, “First of all, consider the name. At the time of the Macworld announcement, San Jose-based Cisco Systems owned the exclusive rights to the term iPhone, and although there was no doubt that Apple (the originator of the iMac and iMovie, iPhoto and the rest of the iLife line) would acquire the rights by any means necessary, such a high-profile announcement surely put a strain on negotiations…”
MacDailyNews Take: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Apple and Cisco have agreed to use the name jointly. The “controversy” generated created much free publicity and helped get the name “iPhone” into the general public’s consciousness. This is not proof that iPhone announcement wasn’t “well-timed,” it’s proof that the announcement was “well-timed.” Surely Kenney has better reasons coming, right?
Kenney continues, “Secondly, consider the fact that the iPhone was nowhere near ready to ship when the prototype was unveiled. Again, Apple usually has all its ducks in a row (and boxed up and loaded into trucks) before sweeping aside the veil of secrecy surrounding any new product. By giving such a long (it’s been almost six months and still no iPhone) time lag, Apple has not only allowed excitement to dim but has also negatively impacted iPod sales in the interim.”
MacDailyNews Take: We’ll need more proof than Brad’s words that excitement has “dimmed” over iPhone. If anything, excitement has grown, with AT&T signing up over a million people interested in iPhone via their website and – this is the real reason for the timing of the iPhone announcement and demo – allowing people to let their contracts lapse, freezing the so-called “smartphone” market in its tracks. As for iPod sales: there is simply no proof of negative impact: Apple’s 10.549 million iPod sales last quarter were 24% over the year-ago quarter. Kennney is 0 for 2, so far.
Kenney continues, “Also, by giving the world an uncharacteristic pre-launch peek at the iPhone, Jobs put every reverse-engineering department in the grey market into a frenzy to produce a competitive knockoff and steal some market share from the real thing.”
MacDailyNews Take: Apple spent years developing the iPhone. iPhone makes all other “smartphones” from even the reputable makers look stupid. Some Chinese knockoff outfit isn’t going to knockoff the iPhone in six months. And they’re certainly not going to steal any meaningful market share; just as cheap iPod knockoffs haven’t stolen any iPod market share. You’re 0-3, Brad.
Kenney continues, “To cap it all off, there was actually another very interesting, unique new product unveiled at Macworld — AppleTV — with a confirmed ship date and for which Apple was already taking pre-orders. The brightness of Jobs’ iPhone spotlight inevitably meant that quite a few consumers were left in the dark concerning this new media extension device…”
MacDailyNews Take: More meaningless blather from Brad. Any overshadowing of Apple TV by iPhone is not proof that the timing of the announcement will hurt the iPhone. The two are totally different products, targeted at different markets. 0-4.
Kenney continues, “Despite what was widely characterized as bad timing by Jobs, the iPhone’s unique intuitive interface, rich feature set and undeniable cool factor paired with Apple’s pre-loaded customer loyalty means that, so long as Apple’s product developers remain at the top of their game, no amount of marketing missteps can keep this new Apple product from getting eaten up by the market.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Twilightmoon” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: The iPhone announcement has not been “widely characterized as bad timing by Jobs.” One Brad Kenny has called it as “bad timing by Jobs” and offered no valid proof to support his characterization. The iPhone announcement was very well-timed. It gave customers time to prepare; letting them allow their current contracts to lapse and freezing the market as they put their next phone purchase on hold. With regard to the timing of the iPhone announcement, we’ll have to side with Steve Jobs, a man with a record of radically changing multiple industries and proven marketing acumen, over some no-name IndustryWeek hack who offers no valid evidence to support his goofy theories.
Crabapple, when you look at what’s in the iPhone, once it’s taken apart atter it’s out, you will see components made from a number of other companies. Few if any components are ever made by Apple.
What Apple is good at is stringing other companies inventions together in a way that leverages those components differently, thus resulting in a product that has advantages.
The fact that Apple patents whatever they can, doesn’t mean that most of those patents are useful, as I also stated above, and which you ignored in your response.
Most companies that do research patent component level devices. Apple mostly parents functionality. That’s very different. In fact, it may not stand up to a patent review as well as a component patent would, as it relies on other devices that are already being marketed as components in Apple’s design. The standard for “obviousness” has just been made *much* tighter by several recent Supreme Court decisions.
You can’t have a “concept” or “idea” covered by patent. Onlt devices and processes.
Many of Apple’s patents applications in this area are for process patents, which are notoriously difficult to defend.
Zero Config. which you seem to not have heard of before I mentioned it, is in use by any number of companies. Type it into Google. Apple was one of the first, but as with many things, one doesn’t remain alone for long. Other companies also have their own methods that do the same thing. It also doesn’t work by itself. Other companies must incorporate it into their own products. Otherwise, it would be like plugging computers without network hardware into a router.
Bluetooth and WiFi have a similar concept in the way they do discovery. Nothing big here.
“@ mel Gross, I have been to AI but could not see any of your postings. Are you using a different name?”
It depends on whom who ask.
“@ mel Gross, I have been to AI but could not see any of your postings. Are you using a different name?”
Sorry, I responded to your second post when I meant to respond to your first.
The answer to your second post is that I’m there. My screen name is “melgross”.
It should pop up in most discussions.
I went to Brad Kennedy’s site and his second comment. Took a look at it. GUESS WHAT, he’s just spamming for hits. They did not even post any of the comments, so I guess he had to do another Dovrak type reply to keep the hits coming in.
Just another poser. 🙁 Not worth the read.
en
Zero Configuration. I bet mel Gross has no idea what it is despite his wide experience & partnership in all things great & small.
That’s a pretty smartass statement from someone who didn’t know it existed until I mentioned it.
Inspite of the anti-Apple sentiment oozing from the article, I think the answer to the basic question is, Yes. I think it was too soon.
It could be that, besides the Prada, there were/are other fully functional “phones” that are/were slated to be released this year, and therefore Apple wanted to make sure its phone left the first footprint. Evenso, I don’t think there was any real marketing advantage that justifies such an early announcement. As it was, Apple whipped up such a fury of interest that people we’re ready to place orders immediately, and the frenzy lasted for about six weeks. As it turned out, the announcment was so far ahead of the actual release that interest actually began to wane until two or three weeks ago as the actual release date began to reappear on the presses radar.
From an investor standpoint, the way Apple is playing its cards isn’t without some logic. Apple, so far this year, is managing to keep investor interest high during a time of the year when Apple and the overall market tends to slump a little or a lot. (I guess we’ll see how true that is between now and the end of July.) If this is in fact a conscious part of Apple’s strategy, this may be one reason they didn’t feel too bad about delaying Leopard until October – It keeps the proverbial carrot out in front going into a time of the year that often begins to pick up again, and usually continues to gain momentum through the new year.
I guess we’ll see what we see.
Go Apple!
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. Steve Jobs doesn’t do or say anything that hasn’t been well thought out (well, maybe except for that wise-crack about teachers). Everyone thinks that it’s just Steve, but it’s also a ton of committees that plan this all out.
The announcement about the iPhone was a great idea, considering people have at least a one year phone contract, and it gave many of these people a chance to get out of their existing contracts, or to extend their contracts long enough to get their hands on an iPhone.
The early announcement was also well hyped. He stole Microsoft’s thunder at the gadget show in Las Vegas that same week. He stole the chance of Cisco Systems coming out with a similarly named product. He beat LG with their similarly looking product in the EU. Announcing the iPhone when he did was a “Win-Win” situation. You don’t have to be a brainiack to figure that out.
This is a rediculous statement. Steve HAD to announce it that early. It was going to be announced either by him and Apple or, by some testing board in the U.S. I find it quite strange that this article was published…
@ mel Gross,
Once again in your haste to post a come back, you keep repeating the same point that I am making, for which we are both in agreement and here it is…….
Yes, alot of the components in Apples hardware have not been created by Apple. Just go back to the beginning, the first Apple computer was put together by Steve wozniak. The software was bought from Rank Xerox.
Patents, The American way of patenting leaves alot to be desired, but it works. It works to protect the creator. If the creator licence’s his creation to a company, the company has sole ownership of the object, if the company puts the object to use in a unique way, the company has a right to protect the unique application they have developed. If this were not the case,
The AIDS medications would have been copied by third World countries ages ago.
The American & British Governments would not have set up the Human Genome project had a private investor not set out to own the complete human Gene.
Example of a bad patent: A company has patented the gene for Basmati rice. This has caused worry in India and Thailand who are the major exporters of that type of rice in the World. What right does this company have to own the sole rights to a plant that is not even native to America?
Microsoft managed to screw Apple & thereby ended up with legally reproducing Apples OS. Windows was created.
PC’s were going nowhere despite Windows until Adobe ported Pagemaker to the PC platform. Until then PC’s were a home thing playing games like pacman.
I won’t even try to explain to you what Bonjour is because you seem to think you know it all.
Bluetooth is the smaller sibling to Wi-Fi & there ends the similarity. The way Bluetooth works couldn’t be more different than the way Wi-Fi works. Find out for your self, when you do, you will weep over the remark you made, “Nothing big here”
I dare say you will base your posts on proven facts & info. in future instead of trying to impress people you don’t know.
Refer to Wikipedia in future, your PC must be full of shit deposited by Google by now!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3927963.stm
I’m happy we’re in agreement about something.
I’m not talking about the tramsmission technologies of Blutooth and WiFi. Just mentioning that the way a compatable device is found uses a similar concept.
I’m also happy you don’t find a need to “explain” Bonjour. I don’t think we could stand it.
mel Gross: “Many features don’t need OS X to be incorporated either. Remember that.”
Let me stop you right there..
The OS on any device, the underlying software platform makes a huge impact on what can be done with the device, the ease at which it can be done, and the stability and the user experience.
How well the OS handles memory, multitasking.. etc. This matters. To say that what the iPhone does, does not require OS X, while true, misses the point. The competition has crippled and ancient OS’s with respect to modern things like multitasking and even memory allocation. Symbian for example has problems with its development environment that makes writing proper code difficult.
Symbian has a huge chunk of the so-called “Smartphone” market. And it’s probly one of the best options. Linux has a small share but it even has multiple versions and isn’t standardized. Windows mobile holds a tiny fraction of the market, less than 5%.
Apple’s OS X is going to shake the foundations of the entire phone market, starting at the top. Just watch.
Mark:
1. “Symbian, Linux, Windows Mobile are way behind and creating one from scratch is a major effort. I doubt Apple is 5 years ahead as Jobs said but they’re at least a year ahead.”
Doubt it all you want. Apple is easily 5 years ahead. Developing an OS takes many years to do so from scratch, and Symbian, Linux (phone version), and Windows Mobile are way way behind, far more than “a year.” I could see someone developing Linux to be a competitor, but it would take more than 1-2 years, and it would take a concerted effort and money. Oh, and talent, that’s not so easy to find, just ask Microsoft.
2. “Again there were many factors, but I think the decisive factors were trumping both CES and Vista. The iPhone buzz crushed both.”
We agree 100% here. Mission accomplished.
Well, I’m late to this party, but….Yeah. What he said.
If bad old Steve’s timing is bad, well, it ain’t hurting my bottom line any. I think His Steveness must have rule similar to mine: Never follow the rules. Not even the rule about never following the rules.
Twilightmoon.
First of all, let me say that I’m as excited about this phone as you are.
But, at the same time, as Jobs said—It’s a phone, not a computer.
That said, any of the features Apple has added, could be added on other OSes. Would it be as elegant? Probably not.
But, you’re right, it will shake up the industry if it sells well. That’s what the pundits are writing, and I agree.
But just as MS copied Apple’s OS formula, others will do that with this too, after a while, when the dust settles.
While they may not be as wonderful, they will get the job done, which is all most people want from their phone.
Unless Apple implements 3G , and third party programs, Apple will be behind.
My Treo 700p may not be as elegant as the iPhone, which I do want to get, even if it is on ATT, but I have a bunch of programs, and much higher speed internet service which I would be loath to give up. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
When, and if that changes on the iPhone, I will switch in a minute, as will my wife.
All I’m really saying, I guess, is that with all of the advantages Mac’s offer, it commands a very small marketshare, even after all these years, though I have hopes that it will continue its recent rise. My stock has certainly done so after I bought it back in 2004.
Not everyone agrees with us that the Mac OS is the end all and be all.
I think he did it to show how ‘influential’ apple really is
———————————————
DVD to iPhone
http://www.iphoneconverter.com/dvd-to-iphone/
The personal loans are useful for people, which are willing to organize their organization. In fact, that is comfortable to get a bank loan.