We can all agree that mobile is like smoking hot. Right? That said, there are tons of articles, day in and day out that sing the praises of this device or that device. There’s the camp of doom and gloom sooth-sayers that foretell of the fall of our favorite fruit, Apple, and then others who claim that it’s a harbinger signaling the coming of the messiah. Yet there are others that want nothing to do with what they see as the fascist regime of Apple and listen to way too much Devo on their Andoirds. Whatever camp you sit in I’m sure it’s the right camp for you. However demagoguery cannot go unanswered and I feel like I have to throw my sombrero into the ring and respond to a post from this recent article in eWeek magazine.

1. Touch-screen quality varies – Yeah, it does… but seriously, is it up to Google to determine touch screen quality? Let’s remember, they don’t make the handset, they just make the operating system. As a loyal disciple of Apple I agree that iPhones have the best quality, but I don’t think if I was RIM I’d advertise that my devices were subpar. Now how is this something the mobile giants don’t want me to know?
   
2. Virtual Keyboards are the worst – This is what I chalk up to personal preference. I had some difficulty with my iPhone when I first bought it, but within a week I was texting and twittering from it like a 12 year old. I could probably type out all of Hamlet at this point with a 90% accuracy rate. The point is, you get used to what you use and you learn to adapt. My fingers are kind of “fat” for a QWERTY keyboard, and as it so happens, the virtual keys in landscape on an iPhone are larger than a QWERTY. So why is it the worst again? Did I mention I think the spell correction feature is more often right than wrong on an iPhone? As for the Blackberry, well I think the idea of clicking before a character appears is a good one-- it cuts down on random keystrokes and accidently hitting characters—but I just don’t think RIM executed it well as it requires too much force to “click.”
   
3. Getting locked into a carrier is awful – Um, do you know of a phone that isn’t tied to a carrier? Come on now, this is the state of affairs; sadly we’re not the rest of the world where devices are interchangeable with carriers and plans. Yes, we’re all waiting for the end of AT&T’s exclusive hold on the iPhone. But seriously… its awful is news and something the carriers don’t want you to know?
   
4. Don’t be impressed by quantity – I have to agree that quantity, as the author states, isn’t the important thing-- there’s a ton of garbage on the App store--but that’s as far as I go. What isn’t mentioned is that because there are 100K apps on the App Store we can extrapolate that 1) people are hot to trot for iPhone Apps 2) it’s a hot market with fierce competition 3) I haven’t heard of anyone else selling 700,000 instances of a block game at $0.99 a pop on any other platform. So if you’re a developer, where do you spend your time? App store? Android, RIM… dare I say, Windows?
   
5. There are limitations – Yes there are… but wait, Google Voice won’t work, so did you try looking for Skype? Personal story here: I went travelling this summer, took my iPhone, used Skype from a Café’s wi-fi – and it worked great and I didn’t spend a cent on roaming. Did I mention this App is free? There are alternative to limitations.
   
6. The old is still good – Have to agree here, but not for the reasons that the author states. There have been so many iPhones sold that the 3G network has become totally saturated. The flip side is that the 2G network is working great. AT&T’s coverage, by all accounts, isn’t near what Verizon’s is, so yes, a flip phone on another network, or a smart phone for that matter, will probably have a better end user experience.
   
7. Follow the leader – I think the real game is leapfrog. The latest Android phone from Motorola, the Droid, boasts a camera with HD video capability. It definitely one-ups the iPhone which has always had a rather poor optical device on it. Yes, I too am waiting for the day that my phone will be a tri-corder, phaser and martini shaker all in one.
   
8. The enterprise is suffering – The last time I was at a conference I saw dozens of corporate foot soldiers brandishing iPhones. Let’s see, it does email, it does push now, active synch, all that good stuff… how are they suffering? Isn’t the point to get email while on the road? Oh wait, I know, it’s all that great HTML that renders flawlessly on phones running webkit like the Pre, Android and iPhone. That’s it—corporate users are only allowed to read text!
   
9. The quick power drain – If you watch movies and play games on your phone it will die. I don’t care what kind of handset you have: It is going to die. Although I must say that the 1st gen iPhone had a remarkably long battery life. Simple tricks help extend that life, turn off wi-fi when you don’t need it, turn off your blue tooth, dim your screen a bit etc, by the way this applies to more than the iPhone in case you were wondering.
   
10. The future looks boring – Yes, oh so boring, our phones are approaching the computing power of netbooks but still fit into our pockets. Bored to death I tell you. But there is hope: the App market is red hot with tons of content and media that is streaming here, there and everywhere. People are doing things with the existing technology through their applications that is making the user experience ever richer.

The competition in the handset market means that we can expect faster and faster iterations of devices as companies such as RIM, Motorola, Apple & Palm try to one up each other on features and speed. No, boring is not quite the right term--a veritable free for all is more accurate—and we marketers need to be poised to jump in and grab the bull by whatever we can get a hand on cause its going to be a wild ride in the future. Whatever flaws exist in the mobile handset market are far more than made up by the fact that nearly everyone has a mobile phone.

Cheers!

-Len Shneyder
Director of Partner Relations
& Industry Communications
http://www.pivotalveracity.com

Comments

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