So, Apple's iPhone has finally arrived: it's a high end Smartphone with a radical new user interface and extensive support for media playback and PC/Mac synchronisation. Back last year, I predicted that the iPhone would be succesful if it could look as good as the iPod and tap into the cool-factor that Apple has generated around their products. Although I'd now say that Apple have succeeded in that regard, there are three key areas that I think they have failed in:

• It's fully touch-screen. Sony tried this with the P800 and soon found out that they needed to overlay a keyboard on top of it. The reality is that if you want an easy to use keyboard or number pad, you need to be able to use it without looking at it, and that means that you need to tactile feedback from the keys. I can both dial and text without looking at my screen, but I suspect that would be hard - if not impossible - on the touch screen.
• They've tried to redesign SMS. Steve Jobs obviously still thinks that SMS should be like ICQ and has insisted on redesigning the user interface to match. The reality is that SMS works on its own and doesn't need to be redesigned. This kind of cultural mistake that American's used to make in the mobile market and its disappointing to see Apple making the mistake again.
• It's far too expensive. I can get a free Blackberry Pearl from my favourite mobile operator and use it with an iPod Nano for significantly less than the price of the iPhone. Furthemore, the exclusive deal will give no incentive for Cingular to offer generous subsidies and its probably that the device will retail as a massive premium to other Smartphones.

Given these restrictions, I would be surprised if this version of the iPhone sells in particular volume. I would expect Apple to include a lot of the cooler PDA type functionality in the higher end iPod videos later this year, and for low end iPhones (think iPod Nano or Shuffle) to sell in massive volumes through mobile operators if they are ever launched. The real problem here is that the iPhone is a PDA cum iPod cum Telephone, and with the ever shrinking size of these devices, more and more people seem happier to carry multiple devices with them.

This pundit for one is betting against Steve Jobs...

Original Source: Mobile Strategies