The iPhone 3G announcement has come and gone, and it seems like the main take-away for many is the $199 price, along with the new 3G and GPS capabilities. Of those three, I think the surprisingly low price for the 8GB iPhone 3G is the most important. Let’s face it, while 3G and GPS are new features to the iPhone, they’re not exactly fresh technologies in the cellphone market.
But while I’m all for a cheaper iPhone, I’m personally more interested in the iPhone software announcements from the WWDC than anything else. Everything from the SDK, to the application store, to the new MobilMe synching all cement the iPhone as a major mobile computing platform. And now that Apple is actually taking enterprise users into account, it has the potential to trump Microsoft’s Pocket PC platform and become a major competitor to RIM’s Blackberry domination.
Saul Hansell at the NY Times Bits blog (someone who I’m finding myself linking to a lot these days) seems to agree. In a recent column, he writes:
The most important battle here isn’t between the iPhone and the latest from Samsung or Nokia. The fighting now is over what will become the dominant platform for mobile computing. In that fight, Apple is competing with Microsoft, Symbian, Google’s Android, Palm and R.I.M. The company’s play is to make the iPhone, and the tools to develop for it, very closely related to the platform it uses on the Mac and on the Apple TV.
Indeed, it seems that the hardware changes to the iPhone 3G are practically irrelevant compared to Apple’s improvements to the iPhone platform. This is especially true if you consider that all of the software improvements will also benefit users of the original iPhone. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the tactic Apple takes for the next few years–minor hardware updates to the iPhone itself (next year, expect a better camera, faster processor, more RAM, etc.), all the while spending more energy on solidifying the iPhone platform.
The iPhone was such a fresh take on cellphone hardware upon its launch that other manufacturers are still struggling to catch up. This head start allowed them to coast on the hardware for this past year, and give us features that honestly wouldn’t have been difficult to implement at launch. But it’s obvious from their platform announcements that Apple wasn’t just twiddling their thumbs–they’re aiming to dominate mobile computing, and frankly doing a damn better job at it than Microsoft’s “Origami” ultramobile PC project.
When it comes to mobile computing, the only other competitor to Apple that has the potential to compete with the iPhone’s features and ease of use is of course Google’s Android platform. Check out the video below to see one of the many ways I think Android will outdo the iPhone. You can find more Android videos and images over at Android Community.
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