Hugh Spear's Blog

GSM World 2009 - just another iPhone beauty pageant

Forewarned is forearmed

I went to GSM World in Barcelona in 2007 and the person who picked my pocket bought a motorbike with my credit card! This year, I vowed, it would be different. I am now back in Sydney having made it there and back without being robbed, unless you count the cafe prices!

Captains Log

So what was there to report on you might be wondering? Well in 2007 the biggest story was of a company which didn't exhibit and their product which wasn't available. The company was Apple and the product, you've guessed it, was the iPhone. Everyone laughed that the biggest story wasn't even bothering to turn up. Well this year again we have the most obvious biggest story as the iPhone again, and again no Apple.  It is the biggest story now, not because the iPhone product has changed but because everyone else has piled in to join the 'me too' tribute.

For example this handset from Toshiba, the TG01 is a pretty nice looking device. Toshiba will bring all of their production qualities to the product that they have developed from their other businesses. But it can't be said that that they haven't at least nodded a debt to the iPhone in terms of industrial design.

Even Nokia with their 8800 seemed to be trying a bit too hard to have an iPhone.
Though as the photo shows, just when you thought it was a complete wannabee out pops a stylus and you start thinking of the P900! Especially once you look at the handwriting recognition.

Such was the desperation to have an iPhone that some manufacturers even employed designers to make their models a bit too close to the real thing. Why I wonder did Huawei make us delete all our photos of their touch-screen phone? Well we didn't let some strong arm tactics stop us getting the photo as you can see.

And Sony Ericsson seemed to be reaching a point of full convergence in an attempt to beat off the opposition in one fell swoop.

Their new handset the iDou  has 12.1 mega pixels of camera power, plus flash, something looking like a PSP in terms of user interface, touch screen super powered Walkman with oodles of memoery, oh and a phone.So whereas Mr Jobs from Apple wanted to merge an iPod, a Phone and the Internet into the iPhone; Sony Ericsson want to emphasise much more the multi-media player aspects of what they have. It does appear to be everything including the kitchen sink and I did hear a couple of commentators wondering if it smacked of desperation. Either way it will be a must-have toy for recreational users, so long as the battery life holds up.

So if everyone has an iPhone clone or at least something which may one day come off the production line rather than the 'artists impression'  drawing board, then how are we going to tell the difference between these devices? Well by the quality of their applications I hear you reply. Quite so, so that is the reason all have an App store. Pity the poor developer trying to support his or her application across so many environments. Makes you wonder whether there is a business in writing a runtime environment which works over each operating environment - but that would be java and probably not a wheel anyone wants to reinvent. Maybe web apps are the way forward?

One conclusion we can draw from this severe case of  "imitation being the sincerest form of flattery" is that the Mobile Internet is now very much a reality and whereas people only went there from old phones in small numbers, the iPhone has seen to it that people not only want to go there, but in some cases don't need to go there with any other kind of device. That is at least one bit of great news for Dialogue and its fabulous Mobile Site Builder. That has iPhone optimisation and I expect will be optimised for all these other devices once they hit our streets. Then you can really have a build once strategy and an easy life.

iPhone vs Blackberry

After a few weeks of using an iPhone I decided to compare it with the Blackberry Curve and the Blackberry Pearl. My conclusion is that RIM is probably going to need to respond to the challenge from the iPhone.

Here are my reasons:

1. Networking - most iPhone users will experience using their device over WLAN and GPRS/EDGE. If you are in a meeting in your office you can probably get better coverage from WLAN. The Blackberry devices just aren't scoring on this front. This become even more important when roaming and data costs can be substantial.
2. Email Reading - the iPhone is easier to use to read emails. It has a better and bigger display.
3. Email writing - the Blackberry has a keypad which has a better feel than touching a flat screen. However I see some iPhone users working pretty quickly at typing, and I wouldn't be surprised if I change my mind about this eventually. I would actually prefer a T9 (predictive text) version of the iPhone keyboard as I think I could work faster. I do like the fact that the iPhone keyboard can be silent whereas the Blackberry will always click a bit.
4. Applications - the iPhone wins this hands down. Not only does it have more applications shipped, but even after a year there are hundreds of independently written applications to do all manner of things.
5. Coolness - the iPhone says 'I want to do stuff', the Blackberry says 'my boss wants me to do stuff'. Its just a perceptions, but important to the attitude of the end user.

So for my money the iPhone is the more useful device. RIM has taken the Blackberry from an overgrown two-way pager to something which looks like a phone and can do all the normal phone things. Apple have taken a media player and added a phone and not gone too far wrong. Its time for RIM and the other market leaders to recognise that the iPhone is going to change the way in which people work.