With the iPhone, Apple must now try harder
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| Apple's iPhone will face slimmer margins in the near future. |
Now that the dust has settled from Apple's iPhone 3GS announcement — video camera! compass! better battery life! — it's time to face facts. Though Apple (AAPL) still leads rivals in style and technology, it's not the breakaway frontrunner it once was. The new phone is cool and all, but now Apple is looking over its shoulder — and it will have to make some adjustments.
That's a big change from just a few weeks ago. Back then, the only credible competitors the iPhone faced were a sleek but boring BlackBerry line from Research in Motion (RIMM) and an exciting but chunky G1 from Google (GOOG).
Since then, however, the landscape has changed dramatically. Suddenly Palm (PALM) appears to have a potential hit with its new Pre, and Google is showing off slimmer second-generation (G2) Android phones. (I've used both the Pre and the G2, and they're pretty darn nice.) All of this new competition is good for consumers, but probably not for Apple's profit margins.
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If at&t would just lower their unlimited plan and perhaps include unlimited text as well as data, they will have the market cornered. I have been tempted to switch to at&t, but the iphone is not enough for me to pay over $180 a month for a cool phone.
I have to agree with the comments. In fact, with the $99 iPhone 3G 8GB I'd say that Apple and AT&T have changed the landscape in the USA mobile phone market more than any of their competition.
You vastly overstate the changed landscape.
It's just another "Omygod the sky is falling" blast at Apple.
Apple MAY see slimmer margins in the future, but they MAY NOT, and your attempt to cause concern is beyond ridiculous.
What about RIMM's profit margins with their 2fer1 giveaway? Why don't you comment on that? Besides Apple's manufacturing and component costs are way down per iPhone. What kind of a "media person are you? Have you no sence of honesty?
Yes.
Worthy choices, but Google has another 2 years before they hit 50 mm cells and Palm will reach 15 mm if they're still alive.
In 2 years Apple will have 125 mm cells, 150 mm touches, 35 mm tablets: 275mm copies of iPhone OS 4.2.
310 mm PCs running the same OS with 100,000 apps and 25,000 developers.
Some platform, heh?
Who will match Apple?
RIM gained market share by their "2 for 1" promotion and by having a lower price than many other smartphones. But having to deal with Blackberries at work, I certainly wouldn't buy one for myself (thinking about a Pre, instead). The Blackberry's user interface stinks. Sure, they use less bandwidth because they strip everything down to a bare minimum. It's like going back to 1993's text based browsers. The introduction of the $99 iPhone should change the market share balance quite a bit.