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Posted on 03/07/2008 8:56:09 PM PST by Swordmaker
Apple's 2.0 software upgrade aims straight for business users MSNBC
For right now, the “i” in iPhone stands for “incremental” when it comes to change.
That’s because it will be three months before third-party programs are available to those who own the coolest phone in America.
Perhaps Thursday’s news from Apple was a letdown to iPhone aficionados who hoped to be running some of their favorite programs and games before late June.
Demonstrations of “Spore” and “Space Monkey” on the iPhone whetted many a gamer’s appetite. But among other games coming in late June is Apple’s stepped-up competition on the corporate smartphone playing field.
It enters with a definite disadvantage: Reseach In Motion, which makes the BlackBerry, dominates the arena. Still, that has never stopped Apple.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
“If you stay up late and watch an infomercial, and they’re touting this new device that’s actually a pressure cooker, and they say how wonderful it prepares vegetables and meats, and it’s the same technology you’ve had around for a long time, but it’s in a new package — that’s kind of how I look at the iPhone,” said Bill Hughes, principal analyst for In-Stat, which does market research and analysis of advanced communications services.
“I really haven’t considered it a smartphone, and I don’t know that I still do,” he said. “A smartphone is a device that has an operating system that allows you to write native applications” for the phone."
“The other smartphone environments give (third-party software) developers much more capabilities” than those demonstrated by Apple on Thursday, he said, referring to RIM’s BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and “even the not-too-distant future-Linux” platform.
What's OS X, Mr. Hughes, chopped liver? This guy is an analyst?
Of course, what should we expect from Microsoft NBC???
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Jean-Louis Gassée would have referred to him as an "anal-ist" …
I’d like to try Citrix on an iPhone, but I don’t think it’s possible.
The iPhone is not going to compete well against the upcoming 9000 series Blackberries for the simple fact that younger business people are going to be able to swap from their 7XXX or 8XXX series blackberry directly to the new sexy touchscreen multimedia WiFi EVDO high megapix camera/videocam 9000 series.
Did I mention I’ve been holding out on buying a new cell phone? My 8800 is fantastic, and I even went and d/l’ed the SDK and have my phone virtualized on my PC.
The iPhone still can’t hold over 599 contacts and doesn’t even have a properly functioning notes synching software. Apple is basicly starting from scratch. RIM has so many 3rd party programs I’ve never been able to think of a an idea for a new Blackberry app that isn’t already out there.
Um...He didn’t say that the iPhone lacks an OS. He said that up until now, he hadn’t considered the iPhone a “smartphone” because one of the criteria for having that moniker is that the device has to have an OS that is open for anyone to freely develop apps on.
Up until now, the iPhone has NOT been open to third-party development. Apple is finally opening up the iPhone. The analyst is pointing out that fact.
Yep. Apple dragged their heels on opening up the iPhone for 3rd-party development. Meanwhile, the Blackberry has TONS of third-party apps. So the analyst is correct: Given that criteria, I don’t know if I’d consider the iPhone a smartphone yet either, even after the SDK announcement — simply because it is going to take a while for 3rd party develop to catch up to the Blackberry. It may never fully catch up.
develop=development
Cost is a big issue with large corporations. Why pay for hardware you don’t need. The company that I Installed blackberries for disables many of the features such as playing music. They were left with GPS, email,phone and internet. Before business would go for then they would need to drop the price and add more carries.
I showed my iPod Touch to someone who had just bought a Blackberry, told her that the iPhone is that plus a phone and internet everywhere, and she looked at her Blackberry with that “Is it too late to return it?” look.
The requirement of 3rd party applications to be considered a smartphone is borderline idiotic. 3rd party applications exist on the Blackberry, etc. because the default applications lack some features.
The apps included by default on the iPhone do not lack for much of anything.
I simply love the iPhone, but typing on it sucks..
First, The iPhones I’ve played with are quiet great. Definitely the best outside the Sidekick for web browsing.
The 3rd party apps for Blackberry are so varied though. I don’t ever expect a medical terminology or legal professional dictionary to be available for iPhone for now. I never expect a real time futures market push browser on iPhone because the iPhone won’t have secure enough encryption for brokerages to trust it to write apps for it. I highly doubt iPhone will have integrated GPS geotracking for farmers on tractors. Citrix push server virtualization. Major corporations have fully mature salesforce applications suites. Oracle, Peoplesoft, SAP, Salesforce.com and a few other database IT corps have fully mature DBA, administration and sales suites for RIM PDAs.
Will Apple ever go after the Novell and IBM Lotus market? I doubt it.
Will Apple ever acquire DoD encryption certification? Not any time soon.
Will Apple have true encryption? Hard to say yet.
Just as Apple survived for a decade due to a small core of niche audio and visual software developers and their user base clung to Macs, Blackberry is never going to lose the corporate customer base. I’m sure hip small companies in AT&T coverage areas will roll over to iPhones and write it off for IT expenses, but I really can’t see IT departments in large companies shelling out the cash for 3G iPhones for quite some time.
RIM 8120’s cost $99 per unit if you buy 100+ at wholesale. You can use VOIP over WiFi and 3G today on the Cingular network.
8GB iPhones cost $299ish each for 60+ pieces at wholesale right now. Jobs and Cingular are shafting customers by crippling the WiFi and 3G Voip options.
How about voice dialing? Every cheap phone has voice dialing, but the iPhone doesn’t. The iPhone is useless to people who drive, since it can’t be used truly hands free.
Wow. I know a whole lot of techies who would vehemently disagree with you. There have been a lot of people screaming for Apple to open the iPhone. I’m glad they finally did it; should’ve been the plan since Day One.
“What’s OS X, Mr. Hughes, chopped liver? This guy is an analyst?
Jean-Louis Gassée would have referred to him as an “anal-ist” …
“
Requires no credential to call yourself an analyst you just do.
People screaming to open the iPhone use as justification the whole “only third party apps do what I want” routine, ignoring the fact that the default apps on the iPhone are far and away better than the default apps on any other phone. Safari on iPhone is the best web browser out there, Mail is a real mail client (though I admit it could use a little more work, and it’s nice to hear improvements are on the way), Google Maps is pretty damned advanced, etc.
I really don’t buy the whole “we need third party apps NOW” argument. They’re nice, but hardly necessary, and I would wager that 99% of iPhone users are happy with what they get out of the box.
I used to think that with mine but it eventually came down to trusting the auto correct feature.
Did you know that the keyboard will make the touchable area of the next assumed letter bigger if there is no other letter near that next letter.
Take the word "right" If you type r-i-g-h the letter T's touchable area will be larger because its the next logical letter. So once you start trusting those little features you will become a pretty effective typist on the phone. I use my thumbs now and im blazing now.
It already has - I know a handful of previous Blackberry users who now are iPhone users...
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