How Will the iPhone Die?

I think the subject matter is quite negative - like the Microsoft iPhone funeral - it comes across as more of an anti-iPhone message than predictive. It is also talking about the most popular and most profitable smartphone in the world that has shown no signs of slowing down as yet.

Infographics work best when they are about topics that people aren't informed about and care strongly about. Everybody knows the iPhone hasn't changed much in design in 5 years but it will probably sell over 100 million units next year so it's not important. Woz isn't a good source for quotes - he says very odd things at times.

The subject of the graphic is also 'who' will kill the iPhone and not 'what' but few of the companies listed make a full device and the technology isn't being highlighted enough. Those companies have also invested heavily in smartphones to react to what Apple did and it's not clear that the technology listed will improve on the touch screen significantly. In fact even if you look at sci-fi like Total Recall where they have a phone embedded in the palm, that looks like step back in many ways.

The part about the iPod holds less weight when you consider that the iPhone is really a better iPod and if a technology 'kills' the touchscreen, it affects more than the iPhone.

The graphs at the end are mostly speculation and the Android references aren't very relevant. Android and most other technology came about as a response to the iPhone. It won't force Apple to do anything and it's the profit margins of Apple's competition that is suffering.

The graph about the iPhone suddenly tanking seems to be suggesting this will happen all by itself without explaining what's causing it. Are people suddenly going to be dissatisfied with the iPhone? We used standard mobile phones for 30 years, we could also use touch screens for another 30 years.

If the focus will be the new technology to replace touchscreens, make the graphics about the technology and not the companies - it's likely Apple would buy technology from them anyway. Ignore the whole thing about lack of change in the iPhone design because it applies to every manufacturer and avoid the speculation about the iPhone's impending failure because of this.

Yes, you could also have something like "Reinventing the iPhone: The Next Small Thing", alluding to the fact that technology shrinks and also the fact that Apple says thin instead of thick in their marketing. Apple's motivation is to get the hardware out of the way as much as possible which obviously leads to technology where you don't think about the hardware at all like the Kinect or augmented reality.

I'd say have drawings of the new technology as the focus showing clearly how it works. Like how we used to get pictures of the Minority Report interface and now we have Kinect, which is actually better than this because you don't need gloves. The companies working on each technology can be mentioned in the text to give a point of reference, with Google Glasses being one of the most interesting examples.

Another infographic that might be appealling is about how we got where we are now. I actually think people are quite misinformed about the current state of smartphones. For example, we get reports every quarter about sales shares that show Android at 75% marketshare but it just means 75% of all phones sold in the last quarter. The overall marketshare of iOS devices and Android devices are pretty close at the moment. There's also a lot of misinformation about Android. A lot of people refuse to acknowledge it was inspired by iOS but it didn't get a software keyboard until 2009 (2 years after the iPhone) - it wasn't originally designed for touch input.

Then you get to hardware manufacturers like Samsung. The Galaxy S was designed like the 3/3GS and the Galaxy S2 designed like the iPhone 4/4S and the Galaxy Tab like the iPad, they copied the boxes, the store layout, OS icons and the cables. Replicating Apple's design and marketing has resulted in Samsung taking a 50% share of all Android smartphones and also landed them a $1b fine (which might be changed at a later date).

You can chart the fall of giants like Nokia, RIM and Microsoft along with the profit share. Even though Apple don't sell as many phones as others, they make more profit than anyone:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/09/08/fascinating-number-apple-takes-71-of-all-smartphone-profits/

Those kind of stats composed into a single chart make interesting reading. Combined with stats like "4 Android phones are being sold for every iPhone":

http://www.forbes.com/sites/adriankingsleyhughes/2012/08/11/four-android-phones-shipped-for-every-iphone-sold-but-malware-also-on-the-increase/

It would also be interesting to see what are the most popular smartphones and how much they cost. The Galaxy S isn't Samsung's best selling smartphone:

http://gizmodo.com/5933516/the-most-popular-samsung-phone-is-something-called-the-samsung-galaxy-prevail

That phone is about 1/5th the price of the Galaxy S3 and also significantly cheaper than the iPhone 3GS. Android phone manufacturers are selling lots of phones but a big portion consists of the lower end models. This goes some way towards explaining why there are 50% more Android phones out there but Android is being used around 60% as much as iPhones to buy online.

The Android tablet market is almost non-existant. Again, we get reports like this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/9657765/Apples-tablet-market-share-drops-to-50-per-cent.html

That's not their marketshare, that's their sales share. Samsung has only sold 1.5 million tablets in 2 years:

http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/151854/quite-smooth-samsung-actually-sold-1-10-of-the-2-million-galaxy-tabs-it-claimed-in-2010

It has probably crossed the 2 million mark by now but Apple has sold over 100 million iPads. I think they must be factoring in the Galaxy Note now too, which isn't really a tablet but has sold 5 million units.

The graphic should also have a nice layout and visual style like these:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_uYXq2Brlccw/THVO23Ue4wI/AAAAAAAAH8w/-26JO78PAJM/s1600/apple+ipad-infographic-large.jpg
http://dailyinfographic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/iPhone_Infographic_800px.jpg
http://www.iclarified.com/images/news/14039/48340/48340.png
http://images.fastcompany.com/upload/app-of-the-day-infographic.jpg
http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/4d40396449e2ae5a31050000/apple-infographic.jpg

Avoiding images that have been published online many times already.

The issue I think is that, while interesting, you have focused on too many "potentials".

There are two things that could kill the iPhone

1.
Apple
This is not that likely as without Steve Apple will just keep milking it, or introduce iPhone Pro or iPhone Nano or some half-baked idea.

2.
Google Android
This is most likely to "kill" the iPhone, if you research more Android 4.x is making some impressive gains in terms of innovation, market share and so on. What one thinks of Google is not so relevant so much so that you got to show stats for Android ~ app usage, browser share, tablet share ~ for example iPad is no down to 55% market share. Samsung ~ now supposedly charging Apple 20% more.

So focus on Android, because that is the only thing threatening Apple, besides Apple-without-Steve.

 

He says this as though it means anything. The iPad has 95% of the entire tablet market's use share. No one is using Android tablets. Who would develop for a platform that isn't being used?

 

This was debunked a month ago. Don't listen to him.

Earlier Predictions:
http://www.electronista.com/articles/12/03/13/idc.optimistic.on.tablets.androids.chances/

Q3 2012:
news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57555318-37/ipad-still-dominates-tablets-but-android-grabs-market-share/

Don't quote ~browser share~ as tablet use share. Different.

Surely it can't be that 95 out of every 100 tablets used is an iPad. Tempting to think so, but with Kindle Fire, let alone Nexus 7 and so on... it would be ludicrous.
Edited by sr2012 - 12/5/12 at 4:00am

 

I'm sorry, a device designed to be connected to the Internet that isn't being connected to the Internet is meaningless to nearly every developer.

 

I'd love to hear any sort of explanation whatsoever why this can't be.

 

"Surely it can't be that 97 out of every 100 computers run Windows" would have gotten someone laughed out of the room (a physical one, not a digital one) in 1996.

Er... you don't have to use a web browser to connect to the Internet. It's 2012.

 

So they're connecting to the Internet but not… connecting to the Internet. Right. I'm sure these consumers who buy bottom of the barrel stuff are educated enough to specifically be using the Internet only in other forms than the browser on the device.

LOL they use apps more because on Android there really is an app for everything.

 

That's a good one.

You see, historically, web browsing on Android has been really bad. That's what I found with 2.3.x ... Alongside a variety of apps that can do almost anything (including a better forum experience eg. AndroidCentral Forum app and Tapatalk), it is natural that Android web browsing is not as high as iOS proportionally.

However, with 4.x we have apps and rather decent web browsing now (Chrome, Firefox, Dolphin, built-in browser for Android).

The real "end" to this debate is to analyse ~DATA TRAFFIC~ used by iOS and Android ... should "sell in/through/out" numbers not be believed.

Android activations I agree are somewhat suspect because I wonder if they determine it by unique device ID or everytime you reinstall, etc. The enthusiast users might distort activations because there is a lot of flashing, upgrading, etc being done.

Perhaps we can pick this up again when we can have a ~rational~ discussion about ~data traffic~ on iOS and Android and see how the numbers stack up.

 

Actually, yeah.  Those kind of consumers would be far more likely to be using internet connected apps instead of websites.  Weather, IM, Facebook, photos, email, videos, music... all those are probably most accessed by apps and/or widgets.

 

Browsing stats are notoriously useless for predicting ownership numbers.  For example, not long after the iPad came out, stats showed that iPad users browsed the web (or to be more clear, to the sites that feed stats back) at a rate that made it look like there were four times as many iPad owners as there were iPhone owners.

 

 

Yes, that would be much better than looking at browser stats.  It would have to take into account high bandwidth stuff like TV displacement, of course.

 

It's not like carrier iPhone activation reports, which include previously owned or hand-me-down devices being reactivated for the second or more time.

 

Google has said that Android activations are counted ONLY the first time a device accesses a Google service such as the Playstore.  (This means there are an unknown number of Android devices that have not been counted, because they come without such services and the user doesn't sideload them.)

http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww-quarterly-200901-201204

 

The usage/share percentages quoted by AI seem to most often draw on only the US. This one shows worldwide statistics. The percentages they're seeing are pretty much in line with what has been reported on the total number of iOS to Android mobile devices.

 

Wasn't it just this year that Android supposedly overtook iOS in total devices? That's the same thing the worldwide mobile browser use stats are showing.

Edited by Gatorguy - 12/9/12 at 4:50pm

Yeah, that pretty much says it all. Not only in apps but also in web browsers, globally, iOS and Android use is 50-50 at least.

Some people in the Apple world refuse to acknowledge this, even myself in the past. But now with my Xperia S and Nexus 7 alongside my iOS stuff, Android 4.x is going to lead us into a relatively tied 50-50 across mobile and tablet in 2013, and will probably surpass iOS in a variety of share measurements by the end of 2013.

The S4, HTC One XL+ (LTE version of X+), Nexus 4, Nexus 7, Nexus 10... Getting much more devices to 4.2 because carriers know 2.x is rubbish compared to ICS etc...

Big things will be happening in the Android world, and in iOS we have... so-so iPad mini and sexy but nothing super-groundbreaking with iPhone 5. No Steve Jobs, No Scott Forstall...

2013 will still be a good year for iOS but it is also be where Android will really flex some muscle.

 

sr2012... you go girl!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9fa3HFR02E