Apple said at the launch they had a 2 year technological advance on their competitors, they better start now to capitalize on that, the competitors are going to to their all to lessen that lead time.
I agree with much of your other premise but totally disagree with this annotated statement above. which technical advantage are we talking about? Touch screens? Nokia, and SE have been there years before. EDGE? Been there done, that about 3 years ago. 2 Megapixel cameras? The list continues. What Apple did was to innovate and implement on and older technology, i.e the touch screen and they did this quite well. The iPhone is far from ground breaking but the implementation is quite evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary.
I agree with much of your other premise but totally disagree with this annotated statement above. which technical advantage are we talking about? Touch screens? Nokia, and SE have been there years before. EDGE? Been there done, that about 3 years ago. 2 Megapixel cameras? The list continues.
Actually... the technology Apple leads in continues to be software. The operating system. No current mobile OS remotely approaches--either in usability (a revolution, NOT an evolution) or underlying platform (the best modern desktop OS made portable)--what Apple has got with mobile OS X. Which is itself young and only the beginning (with the upcoming SDK being a big next step). The iPhone/Touch platform isn't perfect (someone will claim I'm suggesting that ) but it's far ahead of the competition and about to get even better in a matter of weeks.
Technology does not equal mere hardware bullet points.
Which is why, 2 years after revealing the iPhone, 1.5 after shipping, no competitor is shipping an OS with the power and usability that Leopard on iPhone offered from the start. This year better some attempts may be made (possible Android-derived)... but the iPhone's OS X is a moving target. Maybe a 2-year lead was too SHORT an estimate
Mobile Safari - phone browser that fully renders html
Mobile Mail - email that fully enders html
Multi-touch is a specific technology that no one else has.
YES!!! And I hate whenever some analyst is like "so & so is coming out with a touchscreen"... SO WHAT!!! Touchscreens have been around for years, MT is exclusive to the iPhone. Touch screens were pretty useless and cheap 'til Apple came along, now everyone is all "me too!" with their touchscreen phones that conspiciously have black backgrounds and colorful home screen apps.
1) 1% market share --- but the cell phone market keeps growing. The world market for cell phone will grow into 1.25 billion phones in 2008, which means that Apple will need to sell 12.5 million iphones this year to get the 1% market share.
2) What Munster and Sacconaghi said is about the same.
Munster's estimate includes a lot of fine print --- Munster already accounted for a future iphone price drop, a future Asian launch and a future 3G iphone launch into his 10 million iphone estimate.
Sacconaghi is just putting all the fine print into the big font --- Apple is not going to reach its goal of 10 million iphones without a future iphone price drop, a future Asian launch and a future 3G iphone launch.
It's like people arguing whether the iphone is $400 pre-tax or $450 after-tax --- it's the same thing.
The Bernstein analyst has always been very bearish on Apple. FUD is the ussualy type of story he produces. In this piece he is willing to accept Rimm's positive outlook based on little hard data, and crucifies Apple again on no hard data. These are his opinions, and that of his firm which makes money by shorting. Go to their web site and check out their market strategy.
Well that would be great if people weren't unlocking the damn things at an astonishing rate. Does this guy not know how many are bought and unlocked or has he chosen to ignore this fact?
How would Apple make any money on unlocked phones on carriers that don't share revenue with them if they lowered the price much more?
Doesn't matter- the pricing was formulated before unlocking became an issue and are overpriced regardless. Evre
yone keeps asking why the stock keeps dropping and this pinpoints a main factor- too many overpriced products and dwindling demand for them. Finally we have just received a cheaper shuffle and .99cent movie rentals - so it looks like Apple is trying to offest the lopsided pricing in the product line with these more democratic price offerings.
The Bernstein analyst has always been very bearish on Apple. FUD is the ussualy type of story he produces. In this piece he is willing to accept Rimm's positive outlook based on little hard data, and crucifies Apple again on no hard data. These are his opinions, and that of his firm which makes money by shorting. Go to their web site and check out their market strategy.
If a company doesn't give you any hard data --- then you should really be careful of accepting their PR statements.
And more importantly --- basically all the Wall Street analysts have said the same thing. Munster just put all the fine print in the back pages while Sacconaghi put the fine print in the front pages.
1) 1% market share --- but the cell phone market keeps growing. The world market for cell phone will grow into 1.25 billion phones in 2008, which means that Apple will need to sell 12.5 million iphones this year to get the 1% market share.
Apple's numbers were based on projections at the time, which was months ago. It's only february, we won't know total worldwide sales for sure until the year is over. While I'd like to see apple make 1% regardless of what the total is, I think people will be satisfied if apple gets their 10 million this year.
Actually... the technology Apple leads in continues to be software. The operating system. No current mobile OS remotely approaches--either in usability (a revolution, NOT an evolution) or underlying platform (the best modern desktop OS made portable)--what Apple has got with mobile OS X. Which is itself young and only the beginning (with the upcoming SDK being a big next step). The iPhone/Touch platform isn't perfect (someone will claim I'm suggesting that ) but it's far ahead of the competition and about to get even better in a matter of weeks.
Technology does not equal mere hardware bullet points.
Which is why, 2 years after revealing the iPhone, 1.5 after shipping, no competitor is shipping an OS with the power and usability that Leopard on iPhone offered from the start. This year better some attempts may be made (possible Android-derived)... but the iPhone's OS X is a moving target. Maybe a 2-year lead was too SHORT an estimate
I agree with much of your other premise but totally disagree with this annotated statement above. which technical advantage are we talking about? Touch screens? Nokia, and SE have been there years before. EDGE? Been there done, that about 3 years ago. 2 Megapixel cameras? The list continues. What Apple did was to innovate and implement on and older technology, i.e the touch screen and they did this quite well. The iPhone is far from ground breaking but the implementation is quite evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary.
They made those compromises to make the unit thin and run longer on batteries. The other devices with better specs were generally twice as thick. Some people don't mind the size, others, don't want a brick in their pocket. The part that's revolutionary was the UI: looks, controls & behavior.
Well golly, the iPhone has not even been out a year yet - if you think Apple is not going to borrow from it's iPod playbook then your an idiot.
Doesn't matter - if you're going into the cellphone market you hshould have more than one great product to offer. Apple should have had more than one version of cellphone when they intially entered the market. Cellphones go stale very fast- look what happened with the Razr and Motorola. The razr lost the cool factor and Motorola had nothing to offer in addition to it. LG, Blackberry, SoneEricksonetc all have many good models to choose from. Apple needs to saturate the market with different phones and fast to keep up the competitive pace and pricing of the cellphone market.
Mobile Safari - phone browser that fully renders html
Mobile Mail - email that fully enders html
Multi-touch is a specific technology that no one else has.
Not quite sure about that. Do you mean the patent? If Apple has the patent, then you have a point, but if not, I will only concede that currently Apple has a better implementation of an old technology. Now, if the MT UI was the only thing on the iPhone but it isn't. The rest of the phone, is simply old, old, old technology and here you can't prove me incorrect on this.
Doesn't matter- the pricing was formulated before unlocking became an issue and are overpriced regardless. Evre
yone keeps asking why the stock keeps dropping and this pinpoints a main factor- too many overpriced products and dwindling demand for them. Finally we have just received a cheaper shuffle and .99cent movie rentals - so it looks like Apple is trying to offest the lopsided pricing in the product line with these more democratic price offerings.
Dwindling demand? Have you seen the last quarterly report? Macs sell better than ever before and the iPod Touch (the most expensive product) did save the iPod bottom line - the loss was in the cheap models.
Of course they offer cheap movie rentals - they have lowered the price for the Apple TV and want to make money by renting movies. Makes perfect sense. Compared to the loss others make with each xBox or PS3 sold, Apple is doing extremely well. The stock development reflects a weak economy and a lot of fairly odd reporting. A company that can sell people 400 USD phones and iPods and 3k laptops despite a weak economy while earning the highest consumer ratings in every discipline is not having problems.
Apple's numbers were based on projections at the time, which was months ago. It's only february, we won't know total worldwide sales for sure until the year is over. While I'd like to see apple make 1% regardless of what the total is, I think people will be satisfied if apple gets their 10 million this year.
The problem with you argument is that the world market for cell phones is already 1.1 billion LAST YEAR.
The general public probably does not think they are paying $400-$500 for a cellphone's OS. They think only of the physical make of the phone. And if that OS is not compatible with corporate OS requirements it doesn't matter how fantastic the OS is, if your place of business does not subsidize it.
Dwindling demand? Have you seen the last quarterly report? Macs sell better than ever before and the iPod Touch (the most expensive product) did save the iPod bottom line - the loss was in the cheap models.
Of course they offer cheap movie rentals - they have lowered the price for the Apple TV and want to make money by renting movies. Makes perfect sense. Compared to the loss others make with each xBox or PS3 sold, Apple is doing extremely well. The stock development reflects a weak economy and a lot of fairly odd reporting. A company that can sell people 400 USD phones and iPods and 3k laptops despite a weak economy while earning the highest consumer ratings in every discipline is not having problems.
Dwindling demand of the iPhone was my point- not Macs. The lead article of the thread even states that it cost too much.
Not quite sure about that. Do you mean the patent? If Apple has the patent, then you have a point, but if not, I will only concede that currently Apple has a better implementation of an old technology. Now, if the MT UI was the only thing on the iPhone but it isn't. The rest of the phone, is simply old, old, old technology and here you can't prove me incorrect on this.
The patent is not really relevant - even a minor implementation change would most likely make it not applicable... There are two big issues - as far as I can see: 1) Usability, my technically challenged GF is emailing, surfing, SMSing etc. with her iPhone - she even bought songs using the WiFi store. She could barely do phone calls with her P910i (she was reading phone numbers from her paper phone book and dialled them manually) - a device that did cost more than the iPhone when it was released. 2) The iPod ecosystem - iTunes/iTunes Store/syncing/buy music on the phone, come home and have it on the TV or stereo without any manual transaction in seconds, huge choice of accessories... etc ad lib. Nobody else is offering such a seamless overall experience and ease of use. We had SE, Nokia (8800 and N95) and a few Siemens bricks - they are years behind Apple in interface design and ecosystem and Siemens is dead for good.
Comments
Apple said at the launch they had a 2 year technological advance on their competitors, they better start now to capitalize on that, the competitors are going to to their all to lessen that lead time.
I agree with much of your other premise but totally disagree with this annotated statement above. which technical advantage are we talking about? Touch screens? Nokia, and SE have been there years before. EDGE? Been there done, that about 3 years ago. 2 Megapixel cameras? The list continues. What Apple did was to innovate and implement on and older technology, i.e the touch screen and they did this quite well. The iPhone is far from ground breaking but the implementation is quite evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary.
I agree with much of your other premise but totally disagree with this annotated statement above. which technical advantage are we talking about? Touch screens? Nokia, and SE have been there years before. EDGE? Been there done, that about 3 years ago. 2 Megapixel cameras? The list continues.
Actually... the technology Apple leads in continues to be software. The operating system. No current mobile OS remotely approaches--either in usability (a revolution, NOT an evolution) or underlying platform (the best modern desktop OS made portable)--what Apple has got with mobile OS X. Which is itself young and only the beginning (with the upcoming SDK being a big next step). The iPhone/Touch platform isn't perfect (someone will claim I'm suggesting that
Technology does not equal mere hardware bullet points.
Which is why, 2 years after revealing the iPhone, 1.5 after shipping, no competitor is shipping an OS with the power and usability that Leopard on iPhone offered from the start. This year better some attempts may be made (possible Android-derived)... but the iPhone's OS X is a moving target. Maybe a 2-year lead was too SHORT an estimate
which technical advantage are we talking about?
Mobile OS X - phone OS that uses desktop APIs.
Mobile Safari - phone browser that fully renders html
Mobile Mail - email that fully enders html
Touch screens? Nokia, and SE have been there years before.
Multi-touch is a specific technology that no one else has.
8m units + 4m units = 12m.
IDIOTS.
Hey watch it! I got banned for that.
Mobile OS X - phone OS that uses desktop APIs.
Mobile Safari - phone browser that fully renders html
Mobile Mail - email that fully enders html
Multi-touch is a specific technology that no one else has.
YES!!! And I hate whenever some analyst is like "so & so is coming out with a touchscreen"... SO WHAT!!! Touchscreens have been around for years, MT is exclusive to the iPhone. Touch screens were pretty useless and cheap 'til Apple came along, now everyone is all "me too!" with their touchscreen phones that conspiciously have black backgrounds and colorful home screen apps.
2) What Munster and Sacconaghi said is about the same.
Munster's estimate includes a lot of fine print --- Munster already accounted for a future iphone price drop, a future Asian launch and a future 3G iphone launch into his 10 million iphone estimate.
Sacconaghi is just putting all the fine print into the big font --- Apple is not going to reach its goal of 10 million iphones without a future iphone price drop, a future Asian launch and a future 3G iphone launch.
It's like people arguing whether the iphone is $400 pre-tax or $450 after-tax --- it's the same thing.
Well that would be great if people weren't unlocking the damn things at an astonishing rate. Does this guy not know how many are bought and unlocked or has he chosen to ignore this fact?
How would Apple make any money on unlocked phones on carriers that don't share revenue with them if they lowered the price much more?
Doesn't matter- the pricing was formulated before unlocking became an issue and are overpriced regardless. Evre
yone keeps asking why the stock keeps dropping and this pinpoints a main factor- too many overpriced products and dwindling demand for them. Finally we have just received a cheaper shuffle and .99cent movie rentals - so it looks like Apple is trying to offest the lopsided pricing in the product line with these more democratic price offerings.
The Bernstein analyst has always been very bearish on Apple. FUD is the ussualy type of story he produces. In this piece he is willing to accept Rimm's positive outlook based on little hard data, and crucifies Apple again on no hard data. These are his opinions, and that of his firm which makes money by shorting. Go to their web site and check out their market strategy.
If a company doesn't give you any hard data --- then you should really be careful of accepting their PR statements.
And more importantly --- basically all the Wall Street analysts have said the same thing. Munster just put all the fine print in the back pages while Sacconaghi put the fine print in the front pages.
1) 1% market share --- but the cell phone market keeps growing. The world market for cell phone will grow into 1.25 billion phones in 2008, which means that Apple will need to sell 12.5 million iphones this year to get the 1% market share.
Apple's numbers were based on projections at the time, which was months ago. It's only february, we won't know total worldwide sales for sure until the year is over. While I'd like to see apple make 1% regardless of what the total is, I think people will be satisfied if apple gets their 10 million this year.
Actually... the technology Apple leads in continues to be software. The operating system. No current mobile OS remotely approaches--either in usability (a revolution, NOT an evolution) or underlying platform (the best modern desktop OS made portable)--what Apple has got with mobile OS X. Which is itself young and only the beginning (with the upcoming SDK being a big next step). The iPhone/Touch platform isn't perfect (someone will claim I'm suggesting that
Technology does not equal mere hardware bullet points.
Which is why, 2 years after revealing the iPhone, 1.5 after shipping, no competitor is shipping an OS with the power and usability that Leopard on iPhone offered from the start. This year better some attempts may be made (possible Android-derived)... but the iPhone's OS X is a moving target. Maybe a 2-year lead was too SHORT an estimate
I agree with you there.
I agree with much of your other premise but totally disagree with this annotated statement above. which technical advantage are we talking about? Touch screens? Nokia, and SE have been there years before. EDGE? Been there done, that about 3 years ago. 2 Megapixel cameras? The list continues. What Apple did was to innovate and implement on and older technology, i.e the touch screen and they did this quite well. The iPhone is far from ground breaking but the implementation is quite evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary.
They made those compromises to make the unit thin and run longer on batteries. The other devices with better specs were generally twice as thick. Some people don't mind the size, others, don't want a brick in their pocket. The part that's revolutionary was the UI: looks, controls & behavior.
Well golly, the iPhone has not even been out a year yet - if you think Apple is not going to borrow from it's iPod playbook then your an idiot.
Doesn't matter - if you're going into the cellphone market you hshould have more than one great product to offer. Apple should have had more than one version of cellphone when they intially entered the market. Cellphones go stale very fast- look what happened with the Razr and Motorola. The razr lost the cool factor and Motorola had nothing to offer in addition to it. LG, Blackberry, SoneEricksonetc all have many good models to choose from. Apple needs to saturate the market with different phones and fast to keep up the competitive pace and pricing of the cellphone market.
Mobile OS X - phone OS that uses desktop APIs.
Mobile Safari - phone browser that fully renders html
Mobile Mail - email that fully enders html
Multi-touch is a specific technology that no one else has.
Not quite sure about that. Do you mean the patent? If Apple has the patent, then you have a point, but if not, I will only concede that currently Apple has a better implementation of an old technology. Now, if the MT UI was the only thing on the iPhone but it isn't. The rest of the phone, is simply old, old, old technology and here you can't prove me incorrect on this.
Doesn't matter- the pricing was formulated before unlocking became an issue and are overpriced regardless. Evre
yone keeps asking why the stock keeps dropping and this pinpoints a main factor- too many overpriced products and dwindling demand for them. Finally we have just received a cheaper shuffle and .99cent movie rentals - so it looks like Apple is trying to offest the lopsided pricing in the product line with these more democratic price offerings.
Dwindling demand? Have you seen the last quarterly report? Macs sell better than ever before and the iPod Touch (the most expensive product) did save the iPod bottom line - the loss was in the cheap models.
Of course they offer cheap movie rentals - they have lowered the price for the Apple TV and want to make money by renting movies. Makes perfect sense. Compared to the loss others make with each xBox or PS3 sold, Apple is doing extremely well. The stock development reflects a weak economy and a lot of fairly odd reporting. A company that can sell people 400 USD phones and iPods and 3k laptops despite a weak economy while earning the highest consumer ratings in every discipline is not having problems.
Apple's numbers were based on projections at the time, which was months ago. It's only february, we won't know total worldwide sales for sure until the year is over. While I'd like to see apple make 1% regardless of what the total is, I think people will be satisfied if apple gets their 10 million this year.
The problem with you argument is that the world market for cell phones is already 1.1 billion LAST YEAR.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/intern...79783620080214
I agree with you there.
The general public probably does not think they are paying $400-$500 for a cellphone's OS. They think only of the physical make of the phone. And if that OS is not compatible with corporate OS requirements it doesn't matter how fantastic the OS is, if your place of business does not subsidize it.
Dwindling demand? Have you seen the last quarterly report? Macs sell better than ever before and the iPod Touch (the most expensive product) did save the iPod bottom line - the loss was in the cheap models.
Of course they offer cheap movie rentals - they have lowered the price for the Apple TV and want to make money by renting movies. Makes perfect sense. Compared to the loss others make with each xBox or PS3 sold, Apple is doing extremely well. The stock development reflects a weak economy and a lot of fairly odd reporting. A company that can sell people 400 USD phones and iPods and 3k laptops despite a weak economy while earning the highest consumer ratings in every discipline is not having problems.
Dwindling demand of the iPhone was my point- not Macs. The lead article of the thread even states that it cost too much.
Nope, that's wrong, and you continue to spread this misinformation.
Jobs's forcast was "10 million IN 2008". Not by the end of 2008. IN.
If you're so sure he said 10 million by the end of 2008, find a direct quote from Jobs. You won't find it.
"In" is the same as "by the end of". They both occur within the 2008 timeframe.
Not quite sure about that. Do you mean the patent? If Apple has the patent, then you have a point, but if not, I will only concede that currently Apple has a better implementation of an old technology. Now, if the MT UI was the only thing on the iPhone but it isn't. The rest of the phone, is simply old, old, old technology and here you can't prove me incorrect on this.
The patent is not really relevant - even a minor implementation change would most likely make it not applicable... There are two big issues - as far as I can see: 1) Usability, my technically challenged GF is emailing, surfing, SMSing etc. with her iPhone - she even bought songs using the WiFi store. She could barely do phone calls with her P910i (she was reading phone numbers from her paper phone book and dialled them manually) - a device that did cost more than the iPhone when it was released. 2) The iPod ecosystem - iTunes/iTunes Store/syncing/buy music on the phone, come home and have it on the TV or stereo without any manual transaction in seconds, huge choice of accessories... etc ad lib. Nobody else is offering such a seamless overall experience and ease of use. We had SE, Nokia (8800 and N95) and a few Siemens bricks - they are years behind Apple in interface design and ecosystem and Siemens is dead for good.