Apple iPhone: Whose ox got gored?

For the record for those who confuse their facts:

75% of iPhone owners are Apple customers (iPod and Mac owners).

25% are Mac users.

2 distinct things.

Easily for the last 10 years, in each business segment, predictions have been made about Apple stealing massive amounts of market share from Micrsosoft. Apple has made only the smallest gains yet we still have nothing but inflated stories about their progress. If Apple gained one life long customer for each of these stories each of their products would be equally dominant to their market share of good press. If you don't believe me look at the chart "What did the Iphone replace?". How is it that Microsoft stands to lose the most when Motorola has already lost nearly double the customers? Keep in mind MS only makes the OS, while Motorola made the entire product.

Let's not forget how much of what Apple is doing is NOT, in fact, unique. Throw stones if you want, but I use a Treo 700 (and have used Treos for 4+ years). I read email from three different accounts including ExchangeSync, I can access the Internet (it may not be the "real" internet, but it also has a LOT fewer ads), Google Maps is free for the device which I use nearly every day, and it has an established set of applications…especially for business travellers. My only problem with the Treo is that it's not the best phone.

I'd like to hear from you Appleheads on the QUALITY of your phone calls on the iPhone from just regular use or when using a Bluetooth headset (I have a Jawbone).

So I went into a Blackberry store the other day and, oh sorry there aren't Blackberry stores. I meant to say I went into a Apple Store and saw a very crowded store with a hugh line of people purchasing lots of iPhones, one lady was buying 5 the guy next to her 2. RIM is selling well to companies for now and probably will continue for some time and the iPhone is for consumers for now but, wait until the iPhone 2.0 comes out with 3rd party apps and push email see what happens. Understand this is not about which device makes more sense this is about what people want in a Phone/iPod/ etc multi device and Apple has nailed it in a 1.0 version. That first chart is a great illustration of what people want in a multi device but the question that was not asked was which of these things did you use before your iPhone. I never used my phone for email, rarely for text, never for web, never for music, never for calendars/contacts never for maps, never for games never for books, now I have a 500 laptop in my pocket. Blackberry nail email and thats it. Motorola nail nothing, Windows mobile nothing, hard to use hard to configure. and all of them have very expensive licensing to connect to exchange/etc. Goodlink expensive, Blackberry server expensive. Apple free activesync/exhange support.

What is absolutely hilarious to hear and to observe is the ongoing and persistent stink of rank denial and FUD coming from many "mainstream" quarters in response to Apple products. I ain't no Platform or OS ideologue, I believe it's all about "horses for courses" in computing these days. As far as ease-of-use issues, I recently attempted to set up a Sony "Dream" System HTIB with a new Sony HD TV. A NIGHTMARE from start to finish even with an electrical engineer helping out. When we called the manager at the Sony Store to ask what the !@#$%^&*(!!!! Sony's promise of EoU was all about compared to any Mac product – all the manager could do was sneer patronizingly about Apple's products. In the meantime, he had to seek the advice of two more clerks and several manuals to guide us to complete set up. Sony's instructions were "ported" straight from Japanese to English rendering them unintelligible. I could go on and on. Ideology, especially in Amerika, wins over emperical evidence every time. Anybody wanna tal American "health" care? That spells d-e-n-i-a-l to me. We returned the whole "Dream(Nightmare)" system and dumped it back in Sony's hopeless lap. Ease-of-use and set up standards have changed. Consumers' expectations have gone up, way up – thanks to companies like Apple – imperfect as the company may be.

God forbid consumers get a better operating system that what Microsoft produces. When Microsoft actually has to compete on equal ground, it usually fails miserably, as it has done with everything besides Windows and Office. FYI here are Ballmer's initial impressions of the iPhone http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5oGaZIKYvo

I'm still waiting for 3G, GPS, and voice recognition. Only then will it be worth the price & the mobile contract.

The iTouch is kicking it though.

Michael Mace also (in)famously) stated:

>>>More to the point, Foleo is the most significant new consumer PC platform introduced in the US since the Macintosh.

http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2007/05/palm-foleo-its-pc-dummy.html

Er, no.

This is interesting but incomplete. Frequency of use doesn't always relate to importance. I use the map feature perhaps once a week but when I use it it is extremely important. This is one of the reasons I bought the iPhone in the first place.

As with Rob I use the camera quite a bit. The way it integrates with iPhoto is really nice. I've also gone the other way and put a sales book into iPhoto and downloaded that to the iPhone. I can now make brief presentations (fairly uncommon scientific instrument) with data on the spot.

One doesn't expect to use maps unless one is traveling. One normally checks email several times a day or week at the least, so you have to take this into consideration. Perhaps they asked what feature they liked BEST?

Jobs knew that the Mac 'faithful' would try the iPhone first. We have the most to gain from it, after all. This is the same as the iPod, as has been mentioned already. This is also the reason it has to be a perfect example of the tech, but not necessarily the highest speced product. e.g. they used GSM rather than 3G because you don't want to start with bleeding edge tech in such a pivotal device when there are so many other factors, such as battery life, that contribute to the user experience.

AND, it makes iPhone II a HUGE DEAL. If the first iPod had 3G, then who would be wanting to upgrade? If it had had M$ Outbreak compatibility from the get-go, then business could write it off from the start. And they would, because they are the slowest adopters. I mean, they are still using Windows, what does that tell you?

It would have been nice if they asked users if they used iTunes thru their computer to get music onto their iPhones. Or asked if anyone had No music at all on their iPhones!

I bet that would be in the Rarely category

Apple doesn’t make it easy to read e-books on the iPhone. I’m hoping that this changes once companies start creating applications, such as an iPhone PDF reader.

Did you ever use an iPhone to read a PDF file? The iPhone can read PDF files and it does so the same as or maybe even better than a desktop computer. It blew my mind when I first tried this on an 8 page full color PDF email attachment. You can blow-up any portion of a page and page thru it with your fingers much like actual pages on a magazine.

75% being already Apple fanatics

If you go back to the original research, the 75% are defined as "Previous Apple customers — they have used either iPods or Macintosh computers". This a group consisting of well over 100 million people — Apple would be thrilled to have them all counted as Apple fanatics and have them become iPhone customers in the near future. Of course referring to a one time iPod user as an "Apple fanatic" is absurd.

There is little doubt that Apple's competition in the smartphone space is in deep, deep trouble unless they suddenly start innovating better than Apple.

Business users still view Apple as a toy maker and the Iphone does nothing to change that. From the lack of a keyboard to the spotty performance to the last gen inet, other devices are functionally much better than iphone. Perhaps if more than 4% of the world used a Mac, it might matter. Apple has the marketing but in the end, as the 25% new users number shows, Apple is not really a a credible threat to RIM or Windows mobile at least for business users. Apple rules much of the student world but then those kids grow up, move out of mom's basement, get jobs, and start buying RIM and MSFT devices. Sorry.

mm…so folks use the iPhone most for phoning, emailing, text messaging, and web browsing. How extraordinary.

Like all gizmo's there is an initial novelty affect following purchase that quickly morphs into normality of application. I'm sure that the first half of the bar chart represents 75% or so of total usage time for 75% of users, exactly what one would expect.

In several articles since Apple's SDK which addresses the iPhones business and application issues I've read that the main advantage that Rim has is a KEYBOARD.

If that's it, Rim is in trouble. Apple could make a keyboard iPhone in NO TIME at all – IF Apple wanted to that is.

Meanwhile the iPhones OS (modified OsX) has taken Apple something like 20 years to create (starting with Next Os) , the OS together with the iPhones engineering will very hard for competitors to match.

Apple doesn't make it easy to read e-books on the iPhone. I'm hoping that this changes once companies start creating applications, such as an iPhone PDF reader. Currently I read e-books on the Textonphone.com, which has a great interface for reading books in small bites. Unfortunately, you need wireless access to use it.

"75% were already Apple customers; getting beyond the early adopters could be a challenge"

Gee…. Wasn't there another Apple product that they said the exact same thing about? Oh!Yea!.. It was the iPod! The Apple haters said that they will only sell to the Apple faithful and never sell more than that… We all know how that turned out.

Jay.. that was an excellent point ..

and I might add, it is obvious people are more likely to do certain tasks less than others, like buying music or videos, which is certainly not one of the things most people do often as opposed to checking your email . The same goes for viewing maps … it's all relative

I agree with Jay. If I'd been surveyed, I'd have said that I look at maps less than once a day, but I use maps frequently… The second non-phone (voice, SMS) application behind pure web browsing. It's crazy to turn this answer category into "rarely".

Regarding the earlier comment from Tony Rizzo, it seems the only one bringing fanaticism into this discussion is himself. The published analysis states 75% of iPhone owners were "already Apple customers". I expect many of these are probably iPod owners and not Mac owners based on the market penetration of each. Too bad the poll did not address this.

I also use Google maps in the iPhone several times a week, which is "less than daily". I don't think this should be classified as "rarely" used.

Hmm. 75% of iphone users are already Mac users. The inference seems to be that these are simply the same old diehard Mac fanatics ("getting beyond the early adopters could be a challenge…"). But which came first?

The latest figures show Apple has gained 21% market share in the U.S. for computers. That's A LOT more than just a couple of years ago.

So maybe these are NEW Mac owners (from the last couple of years), brought in by the ipod and now the iphone.

IMHO, that makes a huge difference in the future owners of iphones than the inference that these are simply the same old diehard Mac fanatics.

I know many who are simply waiting for their old plans to die before they make the switch – including my wife, myself and my best friend from work and his wife (who, BTW, bought his very first Mac this Xmas….).

The first chart leaves way too much gray area to be relevent. To only have one option choice between Daily and never is ridiculous. The report also samples way too small of a population to be considered for any relevance at all.

ex ped: I'm no statistician, but I'm told that 460 is a reasonable sample if it is randomly selected.

We think Microsoft should probably decide whether it wants to compete in devices (in which case it will need to create its own phones, as it did for music players with the Zune) or compete in operating systems (in which case it will probably have to give away Windows Mobile for free).

Man, talk about 'between a rock and a hard place' for Microsoft! It's hard to claim the Zune as anything close to a major success. (Exercise for the reader: Which is more successful, Zune or Vista?

And I can't see Ballmer, et.al. being happy about giving away Windows Mobile, either.

This'll be fun to watch, starting with the real-world reviews/evaluations of the recently announced Samsung iPhone clone. I believe people can copy the hardware, the question is whether they can get the software, and as a result the system, right. So far (judging by the landfills of "iPod killers"), the odds are not real good…

dave

Philip, thanks for bringing this to our attention. But one thing you said is really troublesome and inaccurate:

"And it’s also interesting to see what most iPhone users never or rarely do with the device – like buy music, watch videos or read maps."

A very misleading summary of the graph, b/c "rarely" is YOUR WORD and not one in the survey or graph results. In fact, the survey used "Less than daily but more than never" and this may be nothing close to "rarely". It's possible that every-other-day users of a feature would have selected the "less than daily" option and this is virtually the exact opposite of the "rarely" word you pulled out of thin air.

In other words, the graph could be interpreted to show that a full 90% of users "view maps" either daily or "less than daily but more than never" — and this could mean every other day, a couple times a week, etc.

Again, thanks for posting about this survey. But it boggles my mind how you can color the actual results as you did in your summary by assigning words like "rarely" when this is in fact not supported in any way by the survey results. Please be more conscientious next time and choose your words more judiciously — or simply use the original wording used in the survey and results.

ex ped: Fair enough. "Never or less than once a week" would have been better.

My typical use of the iPhone is:

I have been using the camera extensively as a job related work tool every day since day I got the iphone. Google maps has been an invaluable tool to navigate in unfamiliar places, and being able to cruise through YouTube videos of Mr. Bean ( for example) and rare historical Music Videos has to be – one of the greatest novelties of all times and makes for killing much of the the daily time we waste waiting for the next appointment or even passing time decompressing.

Internet in your pocket is always great.

I'd like to see another more comprehensive poll – I believe the uses in this poll aren't as accurate as it states.

Those carrying another phone have a contract with a carrier other than AT&T and of course a lot of people have their company issued blackberries but also wanted the iphone…

that is pretty obvious to me

75% being already Apple fanatics (I do not mean anything negative by use of the word 'fanatic' here, other than being a user who is already a strong Apple adopter) simply proves that Apple fanatics are loyal. This would have been far more interesting and useful if the survey had only included non-Apple users as that is where the future of the iPhone resides – once the Apple fanatics are weeded out the story will change and the iPhone story will be different. It will also be interesting to see how iPhone use changes over time, especialy as the novelty wears off – for example, it will be interesting to see how often a user surfs the Web ongoing. Would also have been very interesting to see how the touch keypad works for real typing – I would expect the Apple fanatics to defend it while those who are non-Apple users to provide a more honest assessment.