Puff and pageantry will no doubt reign supreme when Apple talks about iPhone sales and activation numbers in a couple of hours as it reports third quarter earnings. It will be a show meant to boost investor confidence in the company - but it also matters for you and me.
Whether or not you have, or want to have, this hot gadget du jour, the waves from Apple's leap into the mobile phone market will continue to ripple in ways that will strongly affect the services and features your next phone will offer or be able to use. The Web was already going mobile, with popular Web sites like Google and Yahoo mail already offering mobile portals meant to work well on small cell phone screens. But the iPhone's glitzy browser is pulling many more sites in its wake, even if the data access is slow.
As analyst Shaw Wu, quoted in a Macworld story today says, "we believe AAPL has the potential to become a top selling smartphone vendor, which could bring this category into the mainstream, just as it did with the iPod and portable media players."
That's a good thing, even if you, like our editor-in-chief Harry McCracken, have plenty of reasons why you're not buying an iPhone. Smartphones are damned useful little tools, and will only become better as software makers and Web service vendors chase users of Apple's pocket-sized computer. And I for one would love to see plenty more mobile portals for nifty services like the iZoho.com productivity suite and Avvenu.com's remote access service.
So cross your fingers and hope for good news to counteract yesterday's report from AT&T about lower-than-expected iPhone activations in the first two days after its launch. Even if you have your eyes on an entirely different smartphone, like say the open-source Neo 1973, the iPhone's success can only help you.
yuk....i despise the iPhone for what its for....an overpriced, overhyped piece of iCandy!
The iPhone's not bad for a first generation device. Apple still expects to sell one million iPhones by the end of the September quarter. What was it? Two years before Apple sold its millionth iPod. Hmmm. The iPhone sounds like a failure to me.