Seems like Apple is really blowing it these days

Gawd is he stupid. The iPhone was released early because as a mobile phone, the device has to go through FEC certification, which would release the product to the public before Apple themselves. Steve mentioned it in the Keynote.

Exactly. Putting in an application for FCC approval would have become public record. That being the case, it only made sense for Apple to come forth with what they had planned, rather than allow incorrect information to surface.

I ripped the thing apart on my blog: see signature.

we're so protective

Sure

I don't get why these journalists are so stupid. The iPhone will NOT hurt iPod sales, for one thing it's 500 dollars!! Who in their right mind would buy the iPhone for just the iPod function instead of a 200 dollar iPod Nano?

Benjamindaines said:

Who in their right mind would buy the iPhone for just the iPod function instead of a 200 dollar iPod Nano?

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Actually several, and Apple is counting with that. However, i wouldn't use the word "hurt" in this case. In order to achieve success, iPhone sales have to absorve a small percentage of iPod (Nano) sales, if Apple were not thinking about this they would have just released a phone/PDA device with less than 1GB of memory.
Think about this. User X has no MP3 player, and is thinking about buying one. As part of an amazing coincidence, his contract with Friendly Cell Phone company has ended a few weeks ago. After thinking about it, User X decides to buy an iPhone so he can have the best of both worlds. iPhone sales 1, iPod Nano 0.

There's so many people that the iPhone isn't something they would buy (so they would buy a Nano) and Apple's making money either way so they're happy. Also the iPhone is only 8GB of storage, what about the people like me that have 40+GB of iTunes library to put onto their iPod?

Benjamindaines said:

I don't get why these journalists are so stupid.

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"Mike Elgan (the author of that article) is a technology writer and former editor of Windows Magazine."

Not stupid... methinks he (like many others) is perhaps a little bitter (and VERY biased) that the iPhone stole the bulk of the media and attention away from that 'other' technology expo that seems to center around things for that 'other' OS.

That and all they want is another excuse to perpetuate the rift between Mac/Apple users and Windows/MS users.

mraya said:

Actually several, and Apple is counting with that. However, i wouldn't use the word "hurt" in this case. In order to achieve success, iPhone sales have to absorve a small percentage of iPod (Nano) sales, if Apple were not thinking about this they would have just released a phone/PDA device with less than 1GB of memory.
Think about this. User X has no MP3 player, and is thinking about buying one. As part of an amazing coincidence, his contract with Friendly Cell Phone company has ended a few weeks ago. After thinking about it, User X decides to buy an iPhone so he can have the best of both worlds. iPhone sales 1, iPod Nano 0.

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It may hurt ipod nano sales.. but I hightly doubt it will effect the ipod video sales at all. I for one plan to own both, and have a small play list on the phone and then a majority of my music on my ipod.

Edit: 2 posts in the amount of time it took me to right that.. I'm in ECON now so I am taking notes at the same time.

Don't use the word "hurt". Benjamindaines made a good point, more people will still choose to buy a Nano and a phone instead of just an iPhone.

After reading the article, i can understand some points made by Mr. Elgan. Since they release, SmartPhones and similar devices (i should say Blackberries and similar devices, but you get the idea) have been oriented towards the corporative user, who uses Office and Outlook and is also more reluctant to abandon his/her keyboard. One of the major complaints against Palm devices was that they were unable to sync with Outlook, this is the only reason why PocketPCs and other Microsoft PDAs owe their success to Outlook and nothing else. Office is another strong point, so strong it "forced" Palm to bundle its devices with Data Go. I already mentioned in a similar post how users claimed the standard keyboard.
The article also points to the features that can be copied by other companies and again, in the Smartphone/PDA world that is true or at least was true.

Elgan however forgets something very important, and that is that the Smartphone is no longer exclusive for the corporative user, even better, most of this corporative-oriented PDAs are not atractive to young users or creative (designers, photographers...) users and this is a bigger market.

Apple isn't forcing people to buy the iPhone.

You want it, purchase it..simple as that

SpliCer261 said:

Apple isn't forcing people to buy the iPhone.

You want it, purchase it..simple as that

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Point is, Splicer, whether Apple has sent it's own product iPod to it's demise. iPhone was marketed very well, and everyone wants one ! So people will think twice, and Apple, as a professional company, will have to expect iPhone to absorb some iPod sales and react accordingly by tightening supply.

I pretty much agree with most of the points of the article. Even with the FCC filing, information is usually pretty poor in reguards to new cell phones. You see a few bad sketches, maybe a blurry photo or two, and a lot of speculation about features. Big deal, that stuff was already around from the patent filings for multi-touch, and no one would have seen the UI or how it operates. The anouncement was premature and enthusiasm will have waned by launch time (though leave it to Jobs to whip up another frenzy ).

He's also right about it's feature set in comparison to what it'll be competing with. Consumer based smartphones are already on the market, and LG is launching the touchscreen based Prada in March (Europe only initially). Apple is entering a saturated and cut-throat market, going up against some companies that do cell phones and just about nothing but cell phones. Nokia is worth as much as Apple and earns similar if not greater profits then Apple manages.

We'll see what happens, and I do think that the iPhone will sell like hotcakes, but it's pretty implausable that they'll hit their sales projection first year.

I don't feel that the iPhone will drastically hurt the iPod at all. It doesn't have much storeage capacity to make it a viable portable video player for most people, but with everything else that it has it could very well steal some Nano sales, although people who use their iPod for more active activities may well stick with the Nano for its simplicity and toughness in comparison with the $500 iPhone.