Monday, February 19, 2007

Apple iPhone

Since everyone is talking about iPhone, here is my two cents.

I too believe iPhone is the biggest thing to hit the wireless industry in years... perhaps, bigger than any 3G implementation that took place in recent years. What is 3G anyways? And who cares?

However, I disagree from the others on why iPhone is such a significant event for the mobile communications business.

The truly revolutionary feature of iPhone is neither the much talked about touchscreen nor its music-playing capability. It is not even the innovative navigation design that involves some type of flickering of the fingers. All of these components of hardware design are not really new and will be copied rigorously by other manufacturers in the short coming months.

What sets iPhone apart from other mobile devices, however, is that the iPhone will provide users with the uncluttered access to the Internet. Cingular (or the New AT&T as some of its employees started to called their company) has agreed, on Steve Jobs insistence, to do away with the Cingular browser software that is standard on any other web-enabled device on the Cingular network. With the iPhone, a consumer is now able to access the Internet freely without the pre-configured menu of dull and useless contents provided by Cingular. A truely mobile access to the Internet.

It has taken someone like Steve Jobs to finally get through the thick skull of phone company executives to let them know that the operators are really the dumb pipes. They might have thought that they were the water company, but they were just the plumbers. Plumbers don't control what flows through the pipes--it has to be determined between the water company and the consumers.



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