Comments on: 10 Million iPhones in 2008: How?

By: Get-A-Free-Iphone

Get-A-Free-Iphone — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:50:28 +0000

I am always searching online for articles that can help me. Thx

By: Anand Sanwal

Anand Sanwal — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:25:45 +0000

There is much hype about the iPhone and it’s overtaking of current business smartphone king, Blackberry, but any talk of Blackberry’s demise in this arena is overstated and foolish.

For business, the Blackberry is superior. I don’t care about integrations with Microsoft Exchange or other IT concerns. I’m talking about the end-user experience.

If my business required that I listen to music, watch YouTube videos, or check the weather in Palo Alto, the iPhone would be my choice for sure. Unfortunately, YouTube doesn’t figure into my daily job routine and so I have to do real work and that, for good or bad, means lots of emailing with clients, prospects, magazine editors, my teammates, etc.

And when it comes to email, the Blackberry is the indisputed heavyweight champion of the world. And to me the iPhone is the Ivan Drago of business mobile phones.

Ivan Drago (played by Dolph “I will break you” Lundgren) was the brick-eating Russian boxer of Rocky IV. He was younger, faster, stronger, quicker than anyone and everyone or at least the hype said so. He killed Apollo Creed in the movie and was anointed the next big thing. He then met his match in Rocky and as a result, Drago was sent packing to Siberia.

When it comes to business smartphones, the iPhone is no different than Drago. It will likely have killed some other past their prime players like Apollo (are Palm and Treo still around?), but when it goes head to head against Blackberry, the iPhone has met its Rocky.

Ok – I’ve dragged this metaphor on for too long. But you get the point.

Here’s my argument based on a sample size of 1. Why do people use business smartphones? For email. And Blackberry is very good at this on many fronts. It makes me more productive because I can type about 8 times as fast on a Blackberry as the iPhone I currently have.

It’s because RIMM’s blackberry has keys which I can touch/feel as I type and that makes writing emails quicker and more accurate. Tactility (that a word?) is a good thing. It increases my productivity. Productivity helps our clients. Clients are happy. I am happy. Blackberry wins round 1.

The iPhone (almost daily) says it cannot validate my email credentials and so when on the road, there are moments when I cannot get my emails. This is mildly irritating at best and stressful at worst. Blackberry went down occasionally (every couple months) so I could bear it. The iPhone service hasn’t gone down because my personal emails still come through but it has some problem getting to my work emails. I never had to think about this with my Blackberry. Blackberry wins round 2.

I could probably find the answer to this validate issue on some forum, but instead of wasting my time there, I’m going to start shopping around for a new Blackberry.

By: john

john — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:32:55 +0000

Seriously, all they need to do is get it to japan and the other asian countries and we will be laughing at this post come the end of 2008.

By: JessiRed

JessiRed — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:43:03 +0000

HEHE IT IS QUITE FUNNY, YOU WILL BE ALL CONTROLLED BY YOUR MARKET BECAUSE THE IPHONE WILL TRANSMIT ALL YOUR DATAS TO MARKETING COMPANY.

BE FREE CALL WITH A FIX PHONE!!!!!

By: Edgewater Joe

Edgewater Joe — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 04:49:40 +0000

Simple: get rid of that damn exclusive with AT&T. I want to rid myself of them on my land line — I don’t want to go even more in hock with them for the iPhone.

Oh, and maybe make it operable with XM or Sirius. I know it’s a bit antithetical if the thing is both a phone and WiFi, but to be able to get Stern or baseball live and portable would be a big perk for me.

By: Partners in Grime

Partners in Grime — Sat, 31 May 2008 00:58:37 +0000

Piece of cake for Apple to sell 10 million. How many countries are coming on-stream in the next little while?

By: dd

dd — Fri, 30 May 2008 23:58:24 +0000

Whataever the count, when the new phone is released you can be sure…
[dd incrementPhonePurchaseBy:1]

Oh yeah. I’m buying. :P

By: Jesse Stafford

Jesse Stafford — Fri, 30 May 2008 18:53:23 +0000

i don’t see them subsidizing it as low as 149 and 249, but maybe 249 and 349 i would still pay that.

By: Chad Mueller

Chad Mueller — Fri, 30 May 2008 18:38:12 +0000

Bring it to Canada…

By: Yonghwee

Yonghwee — Fri, 30 May 2008 12:56:15 +0000

Hitting 10 million won’t be a problem in my opinion. Almost every country will be carrying the iPhone!

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 29 May 2008 23:01:45 +0000

With a minimum $60 per month AT&T Plan, the iPhone is obscenely expensive when everything is considered.

I don’t think it’s obscenely expensive at all. A regular phone plan is $40 with no data access. For $20, you get unlimited data and 200 text messages. Most smartphone/PDA plans are $30-40 for unlimited use.

By: AlexK

AlexK — Thu, 29 May 2008 22:35:16 +0000

What everyone seems to have forgotten that Apple stated explicitly at their March quarter financial call that they *underestimated* demand for the iPhone and did expect to sell *less* than 1.7 million iPhones between Jan-Mar.

Apple is already *ahead* of their plan to reach 10 million in 2008!

That’s why is iPhone 1G stock running out. Demand most probably was steady in the US in April and May and Europe saw subsidies that pushed the sales.

The 1st generation iPhone most likely is discontinued with the release of the 2nd gen, so Apple ordered as many units as they thought could sell up to that date. Those are now (since at least the beginning of may) nearly *sold out* obviously, and Apple does not do large orders of 1G iPhones any more, if any, because they concentrate on the ramp up of 2G production.

Apple will now try to push out the 2G iPhone asap to keep the momentum, but all that will only help them to reach the 10 million mark even more early.

just 2ct
Ciao, Alex

ps: my own estimate after the Q1 results was for the next quarters, resp: 1.8-2.0, 2.0-2.5 and 4.5-5.5 million (=total 2008 10.0-11.7 mio.), I’ll see if I make a good analyst ;-)

By: Preston

Preston — Thu, 29 May 2008 22:04:03 +0000

umm, i think we have all forgotten that 60 countries are just signed on to sell the 3G phone. And if China signs on… there are 2 billion potential customers. Let’s wait till after this summer to say that apple can’t make the 10 million mark. We don’t even know what their selling point will be for the new phone, other than 3G.

By: Synthmeister

Synthmeister — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:28:46 +0000

Apple has already done or in the process of doing everything it needs to do to sell 10 million units:

1. iPhone SDK/appStore
2. 3G/GPS
3. Quadruple the potential market with over 60 new countries coming online.
4. MS Exchange support

Price drop or no, they will sell 10 million buy year’s end. (I do hope the price drops, cause I intend to buy one when my Verizon contracts expires in August.) I doubt any iPhone will sell less than $299 before 2009 though—they are simply selling too well.

BTW, Jim, you don’t need an iPhone, more like a rumored iPhoneNano.

By: William

William — Thu, 29 May 2008 20:24:22 +0000

10 million is a no brainer. All they need to do to sell 10 million is make 10 million. I’ve got the current iPhone and I love it. I don’t doubt for a second that the new model will have something I won’t be able to resist. My wife will become the owner of the current iPhone, ain’t I nice?

By: jsk

jsk — Thu, 29 May 2008 20:02:20 +0000

CDMA radio, but I’m not holding my breath. Sorry, the iPhone could cure cancer, but if it doesn’t have a CDMA radio, it WON’T WORK AT ALL where I live and work – no sale.