What a fury of media coverage! If nothing else, Apple Computer inc. is a master of corporate communications; Time magazine exclusives, days and days of coverage on the top blogs, front page coverage on national papers, Walt Mossberg and David Pogue leading the ra-ra-ras from the sidelines. Woooooo.
Alas, the afterglow is over, and we can discuss a few things from here till June.
1. “Where’s the 3G?” The 3G was left behind in the name of battery performance and device size. If the wifi works as advertised, it’ll turn out to be a smart decision.
2. “Where are the 3rd party developers?” Steve said that in the name of protecting the Cingular network, they’re not allowing it. Really? What about all the treos and Pocket PCs? Those have plenty of applications that access the internet. It sounds more like “we’re still the control freaks you’ve grown to love” and “This was the compromise with Cingular; they’re scared shitless of a snazzy Skype app.”
3. “Six hundred Dollars and a two year contract”. Well howza ’bout them apples? I’m not making breakfast, I’ll tell you that right now. I would gladly switch over to Cingular, except that they their data plan is obligatory on smartphones and expensive as well. Our expectations might need to be massaged a bit here. There’s a theory that’s running around that makes sense to me; the phones that the Apple stores sell will have a “don’t ask don’t tell” policy in regards to the network they play with. It’s a quad band GSM phone after all; it runs on GSM networks worldwide. That includes T-mobile Virginia.
4. Third party developers, again. This phone has the potential to be such a great device. Upnp, home automation, remote control, slideshow presentations, proximity detection, etc. Forget that it’s a phone for a second; the size and tech in it make it the ultimate trojan horse for all things PAN (Personal Area Network). Why do Google and Yahoo get to have all the fun?
cartoon from the fabulously geeky pvponline.com. See the full strip here. Thank you Roman for the link.
links
Engadget’s coverage of the iphone
Personal Area Network
let’s hear some talkin’ in the bleacher section below.
2 responses so far ↓
Cleveland Steamer // Jan 15, 2007 at 10:18 am
Could care less about the phone. But glad to see that PvP is getting some love here. Although, the direct link to the comic is broken and the jpg cuts off before the punchline.
Steve Blow Jobs // Jan 16, 2007 at 6:23 pm
My five cents:
Personal view:
Beautiful device. . . however, I will not be buying one until 3G is featured. Sprint’s 3G EV-DO network is twice as fast as my home cable modem, and until FiOS comes out enforce, I can’t see random Wi-Fi networks in NYC in the same league as Sprint or Verizon’s network.
Even then, not so sure about the touch keyboard. I like the feel of a real QWERTY keyboard on my bberry. Never have liked touch keyboards, regardless of how large the screen is, I find it hard to believe that I will find it as easy to use and fast to type on. I guess I will see in 6 months when I get to play with JSD’s iphone.
Why no expandable memory? what gives? 8GB does not do justice to this device. Especially if I am expected to watch movies on a plane on this thing.
Financial perspective:
I’m sure Apple will sell these things as fast as they can make them. Should be 2-4 million units in the first 6 months. another 8-12 million in 2008. ASP of $450 * 10-16 million units in first 18 months = lots of money in net sales, however, likely lower gross margins as cost of each iphone sale is higher. Could lead to sub 25% gross margins which would translate to roughly 7% net margins (down from 10-11% net margins last couple of years).
Lower margins = slower earnings growth and you could have some smart money pull out of the stock. Most of market will likely ignore the heavy margin deterioration as they like to focus on the company’s overall sales growth numbers, with ipod sales making up 95% of this sales growth, key number to watch is ipod unit sales growth, which has come down frighteningly fast every year. ipod sales growth now expected at high 30s for balance of 2007 as ipod reaches saturation levels numbers: 400% 2005/2004, 75% 2006/2005, 35%-40% 2007E/2006. I mean seriosuly, who do you know that doesn’t have one or two already?
Does the iphone have the potential to cannibalize regular ipod sales? I’m sure Apple wouldn’t mind at first bc of the higher ASP on the iphone, but they might be concerned about lengthening the ipod upgrade cycle, which would be bad for unit sales (not to mention the stock price).
Timing:
I realize MacWorld is once a year, but why announce it now? Was it to protect the stock price bc nothing else is happening at Cupertino? This thing doesn’t come out for 6 months!! No FCC approval (yet) and don’t even have the trademark for iphone (i’m sure this will be resolved in apple’s favor bc of Cisco’s failure to provide a historical trademark defense-patent lawyers feel free to comment). Somthing smell’s fishy here. . . . could the vaporware like announcement have been to divert attention from Job’s ongoing backdating scandal?
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