Monday, November 12, 2007

oh iPe!


iPhone UK launch wasn’t the marketing triumph many expected. Further thoughts to come but let me point you to a few interesting articles:


From personal experience, there's certainly no supply side issues with plenty of stock available but is this actually a good thing for leading edge technology? Is categorising the iPhone as "leading edge" even appropriate?


For all the bad press (and there has been plenty), I'd trade in my p990 in a heartbeat for one if it was financially viable.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Another reason that the launch may not been as successful as hoped could be due to the fact that the iPhone can only be bought (officially) for the O2 network.

This seems a bit strange for a couple of reasons.
1)restricting the phone to one network artificially reduces the size of ones market, most people have signed up to contracts with their mobile supplier, (with a trend heading towards 18 month contracts), and leaving that contract in order to get the iPhone would add an extra cost to the consumer.
2) The choice of network is a strange one, with O2 usually being associated with a young price sensitive crowd. O2 have been big sponsors of reality TV shows aimed at the younger generation, and their price plans are aimed at those who tend to be price sensitive. Whilst In contrast the iPhone is really aimed at a non price sensitive consumers who want to be at the height of technology, but is done through a network provider that specialises in cheap call plans.

There may have been many a lucrative deal worked out in the background, and O2 may well be wanting to change it’s customer base, but restricting the iPhone to one network could prove to be a big mistake for apple. In a world where consumers are tied into long contracts that can prove costly to get out of, why artificially restrict your potential market? By the time potential iPhone consumers get out of their contracts with other network provides, the hype surrounding the iPhone would have died down, and there will have been a lot more user tests… the iPod when it first came out had a massive take up by the population, and even though there were a few problems with a couple of versions, and there was some negative consumer feedback, it’s uptake by then had already been so big as to guarantee the iPod a place in modern society (for the time being at least). By restricting itself to one network and artificially reducing it’s potential market apple have taken away it’s products potential to be a part of society before anyone has really had a chance to test it out.

let’s just hope the iPhone really is as good as it claims, that it is the technology of the future and that it will pass the user test… otherwise this could just be a good example for economist to use for what not to do.