Only one of the 4 operators in the UK (Orange) have an EDGE network and its coverage is not very good. So most users in the UK wouldn’t be able to use that capability, including the O2 network customers who are rumoured to be the only ones that will get the iPhone.

Wolf

Csaba

Especially when you’re selling iPhone’s Safari as a ‘full’ web browser, not one for viewing transcoded WAP pages, that is just too slow. I still think it will sell OK but more as a glorified iPod with a lovely interface. Just for that it’s great for the mobile industry – but to try to sell it to people who use/need the mobile web without 3G is foolish.

About the tactile feedback: I think the future is the touch screen, partly because of its flexibility. You can adapt the user interface (buttons, sliders and other UI elements) for the application, plastic keys simply can’t do that. And ‘button-driven’ UI will never be so fluent and natural as iPhone UI. For example, not easy to create a 4way or 8way joystick driven web browser. Think of the scroll, link selection etc. Feels unnatural and simply pain to use. A simple address book can work much more fluently if you can touch and drag the items on screen.
BTW, mouse was also a debate like this a few decades ago.
About texting: there are videos on the net on 35 wpm iPhone typists and their phones are (obviously) 2 or 3 days old so this is the max. amount of time they’ve spent practicing it.

Cs

in the USA maybe, think you will find that in europe and the rest of the mobile using world that they do. Maybe not on a technical level, but they sure as hell know when something takes ‘too long’.

the average ‘chav’ (equiv to a redneck i guess) are obsessed by 3g.
even more importantly they tend to be obsessed with text messaging, i really think the iPhone is going to struggle in the UK, with its lack of tactile feedback. Most of my friends who primarily use there phones for text messaging do so often without looking at the screen, pretty much like how a good touch typist does with a full keyboard. Often whilst in conversation with someone else, if they then have to overtly shift there focus to reply to a message, or relearn how to text it will not be popular, never mind the fact it will be very difficult get people interested in any of the features apart from the interface, as when the iphone gets a world wide rollout it will effectivly be a middle of the range handset from four years ago with a fancy interface, and comparable features to anything found on a walkman phone or any other 3g phone, just with a swish interface.

basically i think the iPhone will be a success in the US, due to lower expectations for your mobile services, but it will need more than its pretty looks to get anywhere in the rest of world/countries/areas with 3g coverage. Although 3g is not ubiquitous through out europe, its next to impossible to not get 3g coverage in the larger towns and cities, to the extent where 3g has all but relegated wi-fi hotspots in the uk to nice little areas for people to pass time at in between meetings waiting for a train or plane, and you would struggle to get funding to startup a hotspot service

Russell Buckley (your co-author?) predicted less that 100.000 iPhones for 2007 on this very web site.
So I guess there was some doubt on his part

Average Joes and Janes don’t understand 3G and the few shortcomings that iPhone has currently so they don’t care much if Jobs gets mobility or not. They will buy it if they have that kind of money just because the experience simply blows.

Let me tell you a short story. About 2 years ago our company received a PowerMac from Apple for some reasons. We have nothing but PCs at that time. The Mac looked cool and did some cool tricks so slowly and reluctantly we started to play with it. Now, I’m writing this on a MacBook Pro, half of my colleagues have MacBooks and iMacs, the registration code processing and handling of my Symbian software products are handled by a Mac etc. We are developers, we are trying to make objective decisions, but it seems no one can resist. The experience simply blows. Hardware and software perfectly made together. I was a PC guy, and I didn’t understand what was the big deal with these expensive Apple stuff. Now I understand. And there is no doubt in me that iPhone is going to be huge success.

Cs

Bloomberg: Apple May Have Sold 700,000 IPhones, Beating Estimate
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a6YRRDri.RfE&refer=home

Maybe the numbers are wrong, but no matter how you cut it the iPhone is a HUGE success. I can’t wait for the European release… I will trash my S60 Nokia in that very moment. I tell this as a Symbian developer and software publisher.

Csaba