The Morning Brief from the Wall Street Journal captured the essence of the latest tech buzz: "iPhone Is Innovative, But Will It Dominate?" Unlike the iPod, the iPhone is entering a crowded market. As a result, many wonder if the it is enough of a "re-invention of the phone" (as Steve Jobs claims) to make a difference.
I have a slightly different take. One has to start with the reason for the iPod success. Yes, design and techie coolness were important. But as important was the intangible service side of the product. Up until the iPod, the downloading of music was a some what risky business. Am I doing something illegal? Ok, I know what you are saying "the geeks and kids didn't really care about that." True. But their parents and mainstream America did. Can you imagine President Bush getting a gift for Christmas that RIAA all about piracy?
What iPod did was make downloading of music safe. Thus, I believe that the exclusive tie into iTunes is as much, if not more, important to the success of iPod as the technology and the design. Business model -- not cutting edge tech -- was the key.
So where is the revolutionary new business model in the iPhone? I see tech; I see design; I don't see business model. Without the business model, I don't see the iPhone dominating a crowded space.
I may be wrong. As I have preached often in this blog, design and brand are important. In the iPhone, we have a natural experiment of these two concepts. We will see if they are important enough.
The control of both the hardware and the software is the Apple business model. What good is any product to the consumer if 60% of it's capabilities are too annoying or difficult to use?
Apple's design is sweet, but it's Apple's command of the interface between applications and the user friendly software environment that bring ever greater numbers of non-techies to the market.