xset

Why Apple have got it right with the iPhone

// September 26th, 2007 // Tech

First a quick caveat, when I say “right” I mean right with the marketing in the US and the proposed marketing in the UK, the decision to keep the platform closed and their ties to specific carriers. Those of you who haven’t fallen asleep already or hit the comment box with a “Jobz Suckz” read on.

I don’t claim to be a marketing expert, indeed, my feelings for those in that particular trade a mixed (good marketing is useful and necessary to successful business, bad marketing is a waste of time and money and seems to be in the majority) but knowing a thing or two about business and knowing a thing or 2 thousand about technology I feel I’m more or les qualified to offer the following opinions:

Tying the phone to a single carrier is good marketing sense.
Bear with me here. Apple do what? Make computers, MP3 players and run an online music store. ITunes has taught Apple that there is more money to be made from service offerings than there is from hardware. However they aren’t in a position to launch their own carrier and there is no way they can take a cut of the fee from all providers – hence, tie the phone to a single carrier and watch the cash roll in.

Single carriers reduce cost.
The second big plus for tying the knot with a specific provider. Apple knows computers and they know online music and they know … ok they know lots but they don’t know masses about mobile telecommunications marketing. Sure they could hire in the knowledge and skill up. But why bother? They already have a financial reason to go with a partner, now they also have access to that partner’s extensive knowledge of the sector and client base.

Closing the platform is good long term thinking.
This has got a lot of developers in a tiz. No third party development is permitted on the iPhone. This statement is actually misleading in two ways. Firstly, no third party development is allowed on the iPhone yet. Apple have made no comment on whether the platform will remain closed in the long term. Secondly, development is allowed by virtue of the web browser.

Closing the platform for the short to medium term also allows Apple to exercise some degree of quality control over the software released on their system. Thinking back to my Treo, the number of rubbishy programs that were available for Palm was astounding. Apps that crashed the phone, destabilised everyday functions and worse were common place. I’m not saying they were all bad but the bad outweighed the good by an order of magnitude. Apple have placed themselves in a position of strength from which they can dictate what is installed on their phone and who can develop for it. I’d expect to see development partnerships springing up in the next 12-18 months with trusted development houses producing quality software.

Yes a closed platform is something of a turn off in these days of open source everything but it’s still a perfectly valid business model with its own advantages.

Web applications will encourage innovation and further the mobile internet

Web application development is actually a very shrewd move. It means Apple is tapping the innovative Web 2.0 development pool and their abilities to do crazy things with an incredibly limited medium. Lightweight, online applications are taking the world by storm and the only arena in which web apps fall short is gaming, not exactly critical to Apples target demographic. Also, web apps are (relatively) easy to develop and deploy and will work across the platform without needing to worry about firmware upgrades, hardware changes and new models.

Think back to the early days of the web – plain text and pictures with the occasional JavaScript enhancement or applet were the height of online chic. 10 years later and we’re looking at AJAX driven, rich content sites, frameworks that have transformed the web into a viable development platform and a whole generation of developers who are happy to work within and around the constraints of the medium.

Conclusion?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the iPhone wouldn’t be a better device if it were fully open sourced, available to anybody and cost $2.50 but I can see the business drivers behind Apple’s decisions and, much as I’d like to, I really can’t argue with them.

Will I be getting an iPhone? Hell no – I’m a Blackberry boy now