Mobile and Tablet Marketing

Apple Launches… a Phone. Is anyone else yawning?

You guys may or may not know that I recently moved over to a MacBook Pro at work. I’m happy with it, it’s impressive. OSX is great… but I still have applications that crash and I’ve still had problems with it. I’m not so in love with it that my household is all Mac. I have one G4 and the rest of my computers are PCs running XP, along with a Buffalo Linkstation running Linux.

Am I the only guy in the world that’s really not impressed that Apple built a phone? It’s a phone people! Terms like ‘revolutionary’ are being used. Revolutionary? Really? What am I missing? Isn’t this just Phone 2.0?

iPhone

Let’s go down the list of features and tell me where I’m going wrong:

  • Instead of a standard keypad, the iPhone uses a patented Apple technology called “multi-touch”. It doesn’t use a stylus, has “multi-finger gestures” and claims to ignore unintended touches. Jobs compared it to two other revolutionary Apple UIs – the mouse on the Macintosh and the click wheel on the iPod.

Cool, they improved a touch pad.

  • 3.5 inch touchscreen with a virtual keyboard.

Wow, bigger screen. I already have a ‘virtual keyboard’ on my phone.

  • iPhone runs OS X, Apple’s standard operating system; according to Engadget’s superb coverage: “It let us create desktop class applications and networking, not the cripled stuff you find on most phones, these are real desktop applications.”

I can run Illustrator on a 3.5″ screen? Yeah! Does it come with 2Gb of RAM?

  • Syncs with iTunes: “iTunes is going to sync all your media to your iPhone — but also a ton of data. Contacts, calendars, photos, notes, bookmarks, email accounts…”

Yup, got that with my phone now, too.

  • Apple’s design chops is all over the iPhone: “3.5-inch screen, highest resolution screen we’ve ever shipped, 160ppi. There’s only one button, the “home” button […] thinner than any smartphone…”

Better… faster… stronger… it’s the $6 Billion Phone.

  • 2 megapixel camera built in

Yup, got that. And my phone does video and audio, too.

  • Outstanding media features – scroll through your music, widescreen video, album art, built-in speaker…

Got some of that as well. 3.5″ is widescreen? For who, a flea?

  • Sync your iPhone with your PC or Mac (for contacts etc)

Got it.

  • Standard phone features – SMS, calendar, photos, etc. With photos there is a motion sensor that rotates photos when you turn the phone.

My screen rotates when I slide out the keyboard. Ok… you got me… motion sensors are sweet.

  • Visual voicemail

Sweet. Voice to text was just what I needed when I’m checking my voicemail on the highway! I can scroll with two fingers as I run into the guardrail!

  • Rich HTML emails – works with any IMAP or POP3 email service. This spells trouble for Blackberry!

Mine does that.

  • The Safari browser runs on iPhone – “it’s the first fully-usable browser on a cellphone.” Jobs shows the NYT running in the iPhone – the actual website, not a puny WAP version.

Shenannigans! I’m running Opera Mobile and it’s ‘fully-usable’.

  • Google Maps

With a browser and internet connection… yup, I do that as well. Of course the extra inch of screen will help me find my way easier.

  • Widgets that connect to Internet seamlessly (via WiFi and EDGE)

So I can check the weather as I’m walking to work! Oh… wait a sec…

  • Free “push” IMAP email from Yahoo

Super-duper.

I know that I’m being flippant about this, but I just don’t get it. Sounds like a lot of hype for a phone upgrade, doesn’t it?

Throw broadband video to video connectivity on that bad boy and this Star Trek geek will hit the ceiling. Without it, though, this is just …dare I say… a phone.

What’s next, Apple launches TV? Umm….

PS: Special apology to Bill… he was beside himself salivating at lunch today and already calculating how many years of his retirement he had to give up to buy one. I don’t mean to insult you Bill, but this is some damn good marketing hype for a phone.

Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is CMO of OpenINSIGHTS and the founder of the Martech Zone. Douglas has helped dozens of successful MarTech startups, has assisted in the due diligence of over $5 bil in Martech acquisitions and investments, and continues to assist companies in implementing and automating their sales and marketing strategies. Douglas is an internationally recognized digital transformation and MarTech expert and speaker. Douglas is also a published author of a Dummie's guide and a business leadership book.

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