It would take a pretty technologically insular personality to be oblivious of the fact that Apple's long awaited iPhone is being released next month. Ever since the release of the iPod six years ago, Apple's best advertising has come free of charge. It's not surprising then that nowadays just about everyone seems to be talking about the company's latest creation.
Apple has a history of being cutting-edge: it invented the PC as we know it today, and back in 1983 it was the first organization to introduce a personal computer that used the graphical user interface. The company went on to introduce the Mac in 1984, the Power Book 100 in 1991, and of course the iPod in 2001. Its latest device continues this tradition of innovation.
With the impending release of the iPhone, Apple is digging its heels into the forefront of a movement not simply to change the face of the cell phone market, but rather to continue radicalizing the digital consumer electronics industry as we know it. While smart phones that allow consumers to listen to music, surf the Net and make phone calls already exist, Apple's new venture aims to take the concept of user friendliness to levels that no other phone has achieved, by coupling a revolutionary multi-touch user interface with the convenience of consolidation. But is the iPhone going to be able to achieve the same success levels as the iPod?
Last month, the company reported sales of 10.5 million iPods and a 77.9% market share for the March quarter. It seems the iPod and its accompanying iTunes have carved out an impregnably exclusive status within the digital music industry.
Just how has Apple's portable music player inducted so many millions of die hard aficionados? "Apple was the first company to do it right," says Chris Breen, Senior Director of MacWorld magazine. In a limited market of portable music players that were hard to use and offered poor storage capacities, Apple's focus on optimizing user experience by making the iPod convenient and user friendly, proved pivotal to its success. Catering to multiple preferences, iPods come in a range of sizes, colors and storage capacities, but there is one thing that's uniform-- they all sport a similar user interface that makes them easy to use.
And then there's the other thing. Apart from its purely technical advantages, the iPod exudes the 'Cool Factor.' The frenzied hype surrounding the device stems partly from word of mouth (everyone's doing it,) partly from the fact that the players are just plain snazzy to look at, and partly from an incredibly innovative advertising campaign consisting of dark silhouettes, brilliant white headphones, psychedelic backgrounds, and insidiously catchy music -- the type that forces you to sing in the shower for hours after.
"The iPod is hip. It looks cool. People want cool things. And the iPod remains one of today's coolest gadgets. If you ask your parents for a music player for your birthday, it had better be an iPod or you're going to feel like a tool," states a matter of fact Breen.
The buzz preceding the upcoming iPhone rings similar to the hype that the iPod has whipped up around its slender frame since 2001, and in keeping with tradition, the hype is largely focused on the phone's radical user interface. The iPhone boasts a patented 'multi-touch' keyboard technology that allows users to interact directly with the device using their fingers instead of conventional buttons. The wide display area serves as both keyboard and control panel, and is one large luminous screen that changes according to the functions desired. If you're checking your voicemail for instance, your message appears as a visual icon. Poke the message you want to listen to and you've got it.
"We are all born with the ultimate pointing device -- our fingers -- and the iPhone uses them to create the most revolutionary user interface since the mouse," stated Apple's Steve Jobs at the annual Macworld Expo in San Francisco. The CEO hailed the phone as a "magical device" that would "revolutionize the industry," explaining that it combines three different products -- a mobile phone, a widescreen iPod, and an Internet communications mechanism -- into one portable device.
Speculation is now running rampant as to whether the iPhone will be to the mobile phone market what the iPod is to the digital music market. Apple has indicated an intention to take 1 percent of the world market for cell phones, or 10 million phones per year, by the end of 2008. The company may actually do better than that.
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Recent Comments | 2 Total
September 24, 2009 at 8:29am by John Andy
Everybody loves their iPod, which makes it doubly infuriating when they break down. ipod repairs is a really typical job. so repair your iopd by experience person.
John
September 30, 2009 at 9:53pm by Elmo Saurus
Ok, so 2 years later and the iPhone is out. I don't have one but people tell me it's great or terrible, depending on who you ask, much like any Apple or PC product is likely to cause. In terms of this article, though, I think it would be fair to say that the iPhone has become as successful as, say the (and my) latest 16 GB iPod Nano, at least in its respective market. The users of a versatile music player are obviously going to be much much larger than the number of people who want a small computer and will pay monthly for connectivity; that's really all there is to it.