Much has been said about the iPhone. That it’d never amount to much. That it is a fad and won’t last. “What does the iPhone offer that other smart phones don’t? The answer is not much.” And so on, and so on.
MacDailyNews has a beautiful long list of all the quotes from the folks who balked at Apple’s ambitions and innovation.
I just had to post the entire blog post that Richard Sprague wrote on January 18, 2007, saying that the iPhone would fail to live up to expectations; and that 10M iPhones would not be sold by Apples deadline of within the calendar year of 2008.
Steve Jobs says Java is history
In this quote with the New York Times
Markoff: “And what are you thinking about Flash and Java?”
Jobs: “Java’s not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It’s this big heavyweight ball and chain.”
I can’t believe the hype being given to iPhone. Even some of my blindly-loyal pro-Microsoft friends and colleagues talk like it’s a real innovation and will “redefine the market” or “usher in a new age”.
What!?!? Without even mentioning that the same functionality has been available on PocketPC, Palm, Nokia, and Blackberry for years, I just have to wonder who will want one of these things (other than the religious faithful). People need this to be a phone, first and foremost. But with 5 hours of battery life? No keypad? (you try typing a phone number on that screen, no matter how wonderful it is — you will want a keypad). And for all that whiz-bang Internet access, you absolutely need the phone to work, immediately, every single time. Will it do that?
So please mark this post and come back in two years to see the results of my prediction: I predict they will not sell anywhere near the 10M Jobs predicts for 2008. Okay, it’s possible there are enough Apple religious people to buy a lot of them at first, but even the most diehard Mac fans who buy one of these will secretly carry two phones. One to prove how loyal and “cool” they are, and the other to actually make and receive calls.
I remember the lessons I learned working with the Newton team many years ago. I was in Apple’s marketing department at the time and we did this big fancy user study which basically proved that nobody would buy the thing at the price and functionality we were building. So what did we do? We shoved it into the market anyway because it was “cool”. Cool is great, but you still need to make phone calls.
Gee – I’m not carrying around a second phone. Are you?
Yesterday, in its fiscal Q4 08 financial results, Apple revealed that their iPhone has surpassed Research In Motion’s Blackberry sales, all in a total of one year. Apple blew past and exceeded it’s past 4 quarters, selling more than the expected 4 million units of iPhones. Apple cleared nearly 6.9 million iPhones. In this telling report, Apple is now the 3rd largest mobile phone maker by revenue, trailing just behind Nokia and Samsung. Apple is ahead of once giants Sony, LG, Motorola and RIM.
Apple also exceeded sales estimates in the Mac and iPod department as well, selling more Macs than in any quarter and more ipods than any non-holiday quarter. With Macs, Apple sold 2.611 million, more than the company has ever sold in one quarter in its history.
From Apple Insider: “Apple last week saw a “very, very strong launch” of new notebooks, according to Jobs, although the company separately notes that rumors and press leading up to the launch likely caused customers to delay their new Mac purchases until the new MacBooks were released. Apple is unsure how much the economy impacted Mac sales.
Over 90 percent of the new Mac notebooks now ship with LED backlights. They also represent the company’s greenest products ever. “You’ll hear more about this in the future,” Jobs said.
The unibody MacBooks are primarily responsible for Apple’s earlier low-margin guidance. September’s iPod refresh also played a role in the guidance.
Jobs said netbooks still represent a “nascent category.” He considers the iPhone a form of entrant to the netbook category as it performs many of the functions, just in a smaller form factor. That said, he noted that Apple hold some very “interesting ideas” in the netbook arena should the field evolve into a booming market segment.”
Jason Grigsby and his team have launched the Obama ’08 iPhone app today. What does it do? It provides a way to be plugged into the Obama/Biden campaign, providing tools giving you the ability to actually make a difference!
Find your local Obama/Biden campaign headquarters, and get updated on the vents going on, and how you can participate. Call friends to get out the vote, and see the stats of callers, compare your results to other callers; browse videos and photos from the campaign, read the Obama/Biden campaign plan to turn the country around, receive updates and most importantly – Get Involved!