Like everyone, I’m sick of iPhone chatter. But like everyone, I can’t help but add my two cents on some things.
For a device that was supposed to sell like cupcakes, there are plenty of iPhones left. Makes you wonder if camping out was necessary.
My Palm Treo - which I’ve had for 2.5 years - is literally dying on me (just like my old Nokia was pushed to its limits, as well). The time is ripe to get a new phone, I’m not really considering a Treo, I don’t know why… but am looking at a Blackberry, was going to go for the Pearl, but then seeing Fred Wilson rave and rant about the Curve, that has been pushed up a tad, to put it mildly.
Of course, I’d be crazy not to consider the iPhone at all, but I agree that there are many things that seem missing about it, and the idea of being a test rat on the initial model seems like a sucker’s self-fulfilling prophecy, I think it just makes more sense to sit out Round 1 and jump on the iPhone bandwagon (if I ever do) when they include a few missing bells and whistles, offer faster Web access, fix the replacement battery matter and, oh yeah, include a keyboard. While we’re at it, video capability would be nice.
I’m not a gadget person really, at least not when measured by the standard of the Gizmodo’s and Engadget’s of the world. I’m a fairly meat and potatoes guy on that front, what can I say.
But on the business front, this entire matter has led me to really dig down into the market size of phones, some interesting tidbits (oh, I’m also increasingly taking WatchMojo.com into wireless, but I think mobile entertainment is still very early stage, at least in North America).
The leader in the space is Nokia, of course: Based in Espoo, outside the Finnish capital of Helsinki, Nokia has sales in 130 countries. It became the world’s biggest mobile phone maker in 1998, having sold its 100 millionth handset. In 2005, it sold 207 million mobile devices.
But the total market is adding a lot of momentum: “Camera phones have been a huge success, with unit sales rising from three million in 2001 to 500 million last year.”
In case you’re wondering, the iPhone is slated to sell 90M units over 5 years. The stock market, however, added $24B between the time Steve Jobs announced the iPhone and its release this past weekend. You saw Nokia’s unit sales above, its market cap is $115B. Of course, Nokia’s average unit sells for $200 or so, Apple’s skimming the market at $500.
Will Apple be a flop? By the looks of it: nope.
Will Apple cure polio via the iPhone. Nope. At least not yet.
More importantly, I’m still wondering what phone to get.
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