Hard-hitting Apple iPhone Analysis Strikes Again

by Carlo Longino on 21. Apr, 2006 in Analysis

The analyst firm that put out the silly report that the Apple iPhone was “imminent” and would launch on the Helio MVNO in the US is back with their full report on “Apple in Wireless”, and their press release really makes it sound like it’s worth the £1300 pounds they want for it.

Where to begin? How about with this paragraph:

However, Apple will embrace mobile more fully and pose a greater threat to the mobile phone industry itself – as an MVNO challenging carriers and a cellphone brand challenging handset makers. Upcoming US MVNO Helio presents a good entry strategy for Apple’s iPhone, an own-brand Apple mobile phone that is likely to be launched by the company. Indeed, the release of which is both logical and inevitable, argues visiongain.

So Apple is going to become an MVNO… by launching its phone on the network of another MVNO? As I said before, the Helio connection is a joke. One big reason — Helio’s devices feature its own UI that’s consistent across its portfolio. Would Apple, with its expertise in UI, accept that? It’s doubtful, given that the analyst behind the report calls the iPod UI “Apple’s greatest gift to the computing masses”.

I also like the two statements “visiongain estimates total shipments of over 40 million iPods” and “In 2006, visiongain expects over 40% of all cars sold in the US in 2006 to offer iPod connectivity”. It makes it sound like they’ve done some real research, rather than just find a round up of Apple’s quarterly earnings conference call, where the company helpfully disclosed both of those figures.

One final gem: “It also discusses the possibility of the iPod getting VoIP functionality and what the implications would be.” Yeow. Really, though, if the the iPhone is such a certainty and is “imminent”, why bother putting VoIP in the iPod? Seems pretty counter-intuitive. Or even more so than having VoIP in an iPod at all.

My original offer still stands — if you were thinking of dropping the $2300 or so on this report, get in touch with me first and I’ll compile all the net speculation and photoshopped images for you at a weekend sale price of $1000, and it will be about as accurate as this report.

Seriously, is this what passes for analysis these days?

[tags]mobile, apple, iphone[/tags]

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  • Right on, Oliver -- thanks for the insightful comment.
  • Carlo,

    Remember in high school when you didn't bother to do any research and just made a bunch of stuff up? (well, maybe not you, but some of us anyway) Seems this analyst didn't quite graduate to the next level...

    The bummer is the idea of an Apple phone is really appealing. Especially if like me you feel that in spite of some improvements that mobile UI, particularly for anything involving multiple screen or input of data by hand, is woefully lacking and there doesn't seem to be much in the way of progress being made to fix the problems.

    Surely the form factor has some fairly significant inherent limitations but in recent years people have shown at least some willingness to try alternative form factors so long as they make sense. Recently I had one of the Nokia "Lipstick" phones in my hands- this is the phone with no keypad just a dial like an iPod in fact. Everyone says that this phone is very difficult to use because the set-up is so different from what we're used to, however in less then a minute I found that using that phone for T9 input vastly superior to T9 input using a conventional keypad. While I agree that you do need (at least in this iteration) to look at the display since the tactile response doesn't differentiate one letter or number to the next this could easily be remedied with audible cues.

    My point? It clearly is possible to dramatically improve the UI of mobile devices if only we have (or comapnies) have the courage to be really and possibly radically different. IMO this is why the potential for a MAC phone UI is so intriguing. MAC fans as you know are rabid. They will at least TRY something the company puts out and this is what has the potential to be a change inflection point in mobile UI. If Nokia (as they just did) introduce something dramatically different people pan it without giving it a real honest test. Apple zealots will test it to death proving to themselves that it does or doesn't work.

    Of course as the best UI designers on the planet, I don't imagine that the Apple guys will realease crap either. The issue is whether they believe that they can do something with enough of an improvement that it is worthy of the Apple name.

    I for one am hopeful and excited about the prospects. If the Apple UI is very differnt AND better it will open the door to other companies doing more (and better) innovative designs of their own and hopefully the success of an Apple device will open the minds of a broader base of consumers that not all phones have to look like a Razr (one of my most-hated designs) to be a cool phone.

    Oliver Starr
    http://mobilecrunch.com
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