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The dust has settled on the iPhone 3G after New Zealand became the first country in the world to sell the new device a few weeks ago.
But the angst hasn't quite settled - well, mine hasn't anyway. I'm still bitter I can't justify the expense of a Kiwi iPhone 3G on a pricey Vodafone plan. I really thought I'd be a happy iPhone customer by now, but I don't have one. In fact, I haven't even been able to have a proper look at one.
Vodafone seemed to ride out the critical storm fairly easily, rather glibly moving around 3000 iPhones out of an expected allocation to New Zealand of, it was rumoured, 10,000. The initial 3000 almost ran out when, somewhat miraculously, more appeared. Huzzah.
Industry watchers here have been speculating that Telecom is angling for an iPhone distribution plan of its own. I feel a bit conflicted about this - Telecom has been the perceptual demon of NZ telecommunications for a long time but hey - at least it's NZ-owned.
An iPhone competitor would be good news for consumers. So I wish Telecom good luck (although it pains me to say that as a long-time Vodafone client).
At the end of the day, the iPhone is 'just' a smart pocketable device like many others. As David Rivas, vice-president of S60 software technology management at Nokia, pointed out at the recent Silicon Valley roundtable discussion for Mobile executives, "The statement that somehow the web has not been mobile until the iPhone showed up is absurd." He pointed out that Nokia's current S60 software platform can do most of what the iPhone can.
However, for software developers the iPhone advantage is the developing environment furnished by Apple and the iTunes delivery channel.
David Hornick, a partner at August Capital, said that the iPhone is such a compelling platform because, in a weekend, thousands and thousands of applications for it are distributed.
This appears to be true. The App Store in iTunes, which already has a huge catalogue of applications available, many costing under US$10, means you can buy tailored applications to make your own iPhone your personal, very powerful and individualised pocketable tool. Apple claimed 10 million App Store downloads in the first two days from the July 12th iPhone 3G launch.
Sure, there are thousands of apps for other smart-phone devices too, but the App Store's figures make compelling reading. For example, For example, Pandora Media began offering its internet radio application for most other mobile platforms, through carriers, about 18 months ago.
Pandora CTO Tom Conrad said that resulted in about 12,000 paid monthly subscriptions to the service. But then the App Store and the iPhone came out: "In six days, we had 350,000 installs on the iPhone," Conrad said. A key factor was that the App Store let the company give away its client and support its service through ads. On other devices, Pandora has had to use carriers' monthly subscription models.
The iPhone had already made a massive impact on browsing of websites from mobile devices before the 3G model was launched earlier in July. In April this year, the iPhone beat Symbian-based Nokia mobile web access into second place in the US. Mobile web access has lurched dramatically in the iPhone's favour in the last few weeks.
Apple sold a million new iPhone 3Gs in three days, worldwide, and according to figures over 75 per cent of iPhone users do a lot more mobile browsing than they did on their previous mobile phones, with the most carried-out web function being the reading of email (about 70 per cent of users do that once a day). NB, these figures are from a US survey carried out in March - ie, before the iPhone 3G shipped.
Google has noted a 20 per cent increase in internet searches from mobile devices. Nearly a million Facebook users have downloaded the social-networking company's application to their iPhones, according to Jed Stremel, director of mobile at Facebook.
Loopt, a location-based social-networking startup, reached 100,000 iPhone downloads just a week after the App Store opened. The average iPhone user is 47 times as active on Loopt as those on other types of phones.
It has to be conceded that for Mac users the iPhone is a boon because its interface is so familiar. Standard applications on the iPhone, like Address Book and iCal, work just as they do on Macs running OS X, so an iPhone is a bit like having an extension of your Mac in your pocket. No doubt Apple hopes this foretaste of OS X swank might sway a few more PC users into switch their computing systems to Apple, too.
I'll talk to some Kiwi iPhone users about their experiences in the next post.
