Why The iPhone Has Succeeded
Remember that, at its core, the iPhone offers not a whole lot more than a phone, browser, camera, iPod and GPS. Which, ok, is kind of impressive. But not truly differentiating, Apple’s acknowledged strength in user experiences aside. As good and smart as Apple is at design – and they are very, very good – they’re never going to be as good and smart as everyone else. We see this in the enterprise world frequently, where vendors that foster an ecosystem succeed and those that don’t, well, don’t. But we haven’t seen too many examples of this play out in the consumer world yet, which is one of the reasons the iPhone is such an interesting platform. With the App Store, Apple’s attempting to cement its role with a community play.
I find it interesting that everyone holds up the App Store as the key reason for the iPhone being successful – the key differentiating factor. Has everyone forgotten that the iPhone originally launched with no developer SDK at all and how well did that go? That’s right, it was a massive success.
The iPhone is not succeeding purely because of the App Store, in fact it could just as easily be the opposite – the App Store is succeeding because the iPhone is so popular. There’s nothing simple about developing for the iPhone – you have to learn Objective-C and Cocoa Touch, you have to pay to get involved at all and you don’t know if you’ll be allowed to ship your app until after you finish it and submit it to Apple. So why do people do it? Because there are a huge number of iPhone users out there.
In the short time the iPhone has been out, people have simply forgotten how revolutionary the phone and Apple software that comes with it actually is. The third party apps are just very tasty icing on top.
June 27th, 2009 at 3:46 am
The App Store may not be the key reason for the iPhone’s success … but it may be a key reason to keep people from switching once their contracts are up.
June 27th, 2009 at 5:38 am
Absolutely the App Store is an important feature, but I think “alpha geeks” tend to overestimate the benefit of apps. The stats that are available (eg:http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/02/19/iphone_app_usage_declining_rapidly_after_first_downloads/) show average users mess around with apps a reasonable amount, but hardly ever use a single app for more than a day or two. It’s unlikely that such a user will care if they can’t take their apps with them when they change phones.
I have a lot of trouble imagining someone non-technical like my wife justifying her next iPhone purchase based on the app store rather than the ease of email and web access, the fact that it’s pretty, ease of use and the iPod and iPhoto features. The only third party app of any significance would be an MSN or Skype client and I have no doubt competing mobile phones would have one of those on offer.
June 27th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
everyone misses the crucial role of iTunes itself. the App Store is just one part of iTunes, but the whole iTunes package is so much more than just that or media playback: comprehensive media data base organizer, multiproduct media-store and downloader, Apple-hosted podcast distribution network and web radio player, media formating/conversion utility, etc.
then once you buy Apple hardware – iPod, iPhone, AppleTV – iTunes also becomes your single all purpose device-management utility: account management, software updates, backup, content transfer and synching … plus apps.
(not everything is managed via iTunes: iPhoto and Mail handle their categories’ iPhone interface for Mac owners (but not PC’ers who have to manage them via the iPhone instead), and MobileMe is offering additional optional services now too.)
Apple integrates all these iTunes functions so seamlessly with the iPhone that users don’t really think about iTunes after the first time set up at all. they just work on their playlists and buy stuff – both of which are fun – and then play media or use the apps. but under the hood iTunes keeps it all together.
None of the competition has such a comprehensive platform as iTunes for their smartphones. not even close. WinMobile is a mish-mash that MS has never really integrated with all its other products/services/software (they say they will, someday). RIM and Palm have virtually nothing to work with beyond the handsets themselves. Android is trying to put it all in the Google “cloud,” but obviously it can’t match the whole hardware-based iTunes package. Nokia now with Ovi is trying to put all the pieces together with its new “cloud” service, but it too is limited without hardware support and you have to start from scratch, transferring everything you got already into a new Ovi realm – too high a barrier for most (Nokia should have bought Yahoo instead, the dummies, to quickly catch up at least with Android/Google).
so when you boil it all down, it is really iTunes that is the secret of the iPhone’s success, as it was for the iPod before it. it’s the platform that matters.
June 30th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
I take your point with regard to the initial success, but as much as the iPhone’s interface was a quantum leap forward at the time, I’m unconvinced that it’s still differentiated. With the Android powered HTC Hero and Palm Pre, the iPhone’s once differentiating interface is facing significant challenges from a usability and aesthetic standpoint.
The application marketplace, on the other hand, reinforced by the network effects that drove it, faces no such challenger. Second place, in that arena, is a distant second.
Which is what convinces me that the strongest thing that the iPhone has going for it still is the application catalog, much like the strength of Windows was not the OS but the wealth of third party apps.
July 3rd, 2009 at 4:16 am
A significant factor in the iPhone’s success (without taking the internet and app store into consideration) is the fact that it does 90% of the things that 90% of the population want to use it for – and it does these things very well.
Most consumers/prosumers on the iPhone bandwagon now only need to carry ONE device in their pockets. Before my purchase I was carrying a phone, a cheap Palm (calendaring), and my iPod. Others may have moved from Treo + iPod, or BB + iPod, to simply iPhone (discounting blood loyalties to RIM).
While there are still, what I (and no doubt others) feel little things wrong with some aspects of the iPhone’s user interface, for most of what it does, it does these things very well.
As far as the apps are concerned, I do happen to be a user that does use some apps on a daily basis (though I recognise I am probably in the minority). I have a calorie counting app (I could not have lost the 15kg I did without it’s convenience), and to a lesser extent the Facebook app. Facebook is replaceable across devices (their seems to be a client for anything that is fueled by electrons), but for the time being, I could not lose the other one.