Comments on: iPhone – Will it blend?

By: Rob Kischuk

Rob Kischuk — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 02:03:40 +0000

anonymous: I see a ton of value in being able to send large amounts of email from a device that fits in my pocket. I’m not the only one. Most Blackberry/Treo/Sidekick users aren’t going to buy that argument.

raddedas: Hard for me to believe that a cross-carrier launch (Cingular/ATT plus T-Mobile and Alltel) couldn’t drive enough volume (including revenue share from data plans) to cover the exclusivity premium Cingular’s paying. On the CDMA vs. GSM angle, there’s no comparison. As a recent CDMA convert, I can certainly say that mating a smart phone to EDGE (GSM) vs. EVDO (CDMA) is crippling. A long term exclusivity deal tied to EDGE opens the door in the US for another device to beat them on usability of data services. It all depends on how long the exclusivity is.

By: raddedas

raddedas — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 11:00:07 +0000

They couldn’t launch on every carrier in the US – the market is way too fragmented, even now it has settled down to CDMA vs GSM. They struggled enough just to do a GSM phone (it’s an already out of date only 2.5G device, after all). GSM was the only sensible choice of technology if they want a global product (even if it cuts out South Korea and Japan until the UMTS 3G rev). Given that, a Cingular tie-in makes more sense because they will have bought that with bigger handset subsidies than they would have offered for a non-exclusive deal, and the device is already price-sensitive as you pointed out.

It’s a more complicated market than music players, and only time will tell whether they’ll last more than a year or go the way of Siemens Mobile et al.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 10:33:20 +0000

“Anyone who wants to use a smart phone for heavy email usage is going to prefer the tactile feedback and certainty of actual keys.”

In which case they would certainly switch to using a notebook or laptop computer, rather than a tiny phone.