Commuting to and from work in the Washington, DC metro area where I live is a full-contact sport. Regularly Washington is near the top of the list of America’s cities with the worst traffic, and deservedly so. For Washingtonians traffic has disproportional influence on our lives, and the locals have developed some very innovative mechanisms to cope with traffic.
I was excited to see the Carticipate application on the iTunes Application Store. Carticipate is a social networking tool to find carpool buddies. I was very impressed by this real-world application of social networking. There’s also a Carticpate application coming to Facebook. The value of Carticipate obviosly increases as mor eusers come on board. One complaint about carpooling is that it does not offer carpoolers flexibility for things like errands, after work happy hours and trips to the gym before and after work. With a large enough social network a Carticipate user would be more likely to have a friend going from most points A to most points B at various times of day. One might even be able to coordinate “transfers” among multiple carpooling buddies so that Bob rides with Carol from Washington to Tysons Corner and then catches a ride with Ted and Alice from Tysons Corner to Ashburn.
That, and I think the concept is just really neat.
In the interest of a Cavuto-bashing hat trick, I had to comment on this little tidbit about Fox News altering the transcript of commentary that was aired on the network in which Neil Cavuto attempted to take Apple to task for disappointing iPhone sales. In the process of his commentary, Cavuto made several mis-statements. the Fox News web site says of the corrected transcript “This is the correct copy that was read on air.” The corrected transcript is not what I have heard was actually said on the air, and it STILL contains incorrect information.
From Daring Fireball:
- Where he was previously quoted as saying:
Lo and behold, we’re told 146,000 iPhones were activated in the day
and a half between the phone’s launch and the most recent quarter’s end.
He is now quoted as saying:
Lo and behold, we’re told 270,000 iPhones were sold
in the day and a half between the phone’s launch and the most recent
quarter’s end – trouble is only about 146,000 were actually activated.
The transcript still claims Apple had projected “half a million”
opening weekend sales (they didn’t), and still uses the adjective
“hotsy-totsy”.
I will admit upfront that I did not see the initial commentary made by Mr. Cavuto. I also have not been able to find a video of the commentary on-line. I’m taking Daring Fireball and the commentators of MacBreak Weekly at their word, and I have little reason not to do so. Cavuto initially ignored the fact that Apple actually sold 270,000 iPhones in the first few days of sales. Considering the issues many early adopters had activating their phones in those first days, this is not an unusual disparity between number of phones sold and the number activated. Also, no doubt many people bought multiple phones as gifts, to sell on eBay, etc. It’s important to keep in mind that there were only 30 hours of the second quarter in which the iPhone was actually available for sale.
The transcript still includes a claim that Apple had projected the sale of 500,000 iPhones in the first weekend of sales. This is utterly and totally false. Neither Apple nor AT&T, to the very best of my knowledge, projected any sales volumes before the phone was launched. The closest data to a unit sales projection I had seen for the iPhone in the weeks leading up to the launch was that each AT&T-owned retail outlet would have a total of 20 iPhones available for sale, and that no numbers were available on iPhones available at each Apple store. I can speak from my own experience of almost buying an iPhone at an AT&T store that the location at Potomac Yard in Alexandria, VA had way more than 20 iPhones for sale. If anything Apple and AT&T seemed to be setting expectations of iPhone shortages in the early days of the launch. So, wrong again, Mr. Cavuto.
OK, do I even need to say anything at all about the iPhone? The English language does not have adequate words to express how much I want this phone. I am counting down the hours until the phone is released in June.
Even though the user interface looks super-sweet, the real killer for me is synchronization. I have the Palm Treo 650 right now, and I am truly a glutton for punishment because I endeavor to keep the Palm synchronized with my Mac and my work PC. I think this form of torture is technically outlawed by the Geneva convention.
BEGIN RANT HERE
Even worse than sync is Versamail, the Palm e-mail client that allegedly supports synchronization with Microsoft Exchange server e-mail, which my office uses. Versamail, bless its heart, cannot just synchronize the e-mail in my work in-box, it has to synchronize the calendar is well. This is not a bad thing in theory, and Communism works in theory. The synchronization process at least once a week would generate an error that my calendar database had been corrupted. The software offered to very helpfully delete the calendar on both my Palm and my PC. It didn’t take me long to drop a big, nuclear F-bomb and just give up on the damn thing. So now that I can’t check e-mail using my smart phone what the hell is the point of having a smart phone?
END RANT HERE
OK, I’ve taken a few minutes to calm down and just chill out for a moment. Did I mention that I really want an iPhone?
Really not all is perfect with the iPhone, though. The big missing piece of the puzzle to my mind is that the phone’s data connection is on Cingular’s EDGE network (up to 384 Kbps according to Cingular, but topping out well below that in most real-world measures). The HSDPA network (400 – 700 Kbps according to Cingular website) does not have broad coverage yet, but would certainly provide a fast connection where available.
Of course, listen to an American complaining about the iPhone not working on his protocol of choice. The rest of the world is going to have to wait well past June for the phone to be available in their markets. Apple may be challenged to get conservative and crotchety carriers to buy into a phone that so overshadows the wireless service itself. David Pogue has indicated that Cingular is going to have this phone completely locked down and is prepared for hacker efforts to unlock the phone. As a rule I think locking the device to a specific provider’s network is a move that takes value from your customer and gives it to that provider. It looks like Apple have been willing to make some significant compromises to make progress with their first carrier.
Technorati Tag: iPhone.
There’s this bit on the Chicago Tribune today about how Motorola have delayed the launch of the iTunes phone because of objections from a wireless carrier (registration required, bless Bugmenot).
The gist of the Trib article is that the delay resulted when one of the wireless carriers objected to the inclusion of iTunes functionality on a wireless phone that would not include them in the revenue mix for sales. I have to admit that I’m somewhat taken aback by this, because I could only suspect most users would simply be transferring songs already purchased via their computers to the phone. If users are downloading the songs via wireless data networks, carriers should be satisfied and ga-ga with revenue from the downloading of those bits (data tariffs are pretty lucrative). In other words, the carrier is included in the mix on the basis of the cost of the download itself.
At Fierce Wireless there is speculation that wireless companies are focused on launching their own music services, and this is the basis of their reluctance to let Motorola fly with this phone. I can give this a degree of validity, because weve been seeing more and more wireless carriers looking to control and brand the entire wireless experience as they see fit.
The Trib rightly observes that this scenario (if indeed it is the result of carrier objections) speaks volumes about the balance of power between carriers and equipment manufacturers. Shadows of PalmOne’s decision to disable Bluetooth on the Treo 650 at the behest of Sprint, anyone? This balance of power, combined with the rise of lowest-cost manufacturers like LG spells some serious trouble for the premium brands in the mobile industry. As carriers take issue with new features and functionality, it could easily follow that the innovation that the likes of Moto, Nokia and Sony Ericsson have shown could come to matter less and less.
The competitive intelligence guy in me is hopping that the executives at these companies took the time to war game these potential scenarios and are ready with some means to respond. One idea that jumps to my mind is to push the notion of the unlocked phone harder here in the US just like its been in Europe. With number portability a reality now, phone manufacturers can really make a push on the notion of being able to take your phone with you wherever you go. An obvious obstacle that comes to mind is the diverse wireless standards in the US, such that a customer would not be able to take their phone from, say T-Mobile (who use GSM) to Verizon Wireless (who use CDMA). New chipsets, however, might alleviate this limitation.
Regardless, Motorolas lot reflects broader changes for wireless phone manufacturers. I hope they are prepared to respond, because I want my iTunes phone.
According to this bit from Forbes on-line, Apple and Motorola have leaked some quasi-official news about a phone their going to launch together.
Gimmie gimmie gimmie!
The big value add seems to be that one will be able to take a few iTunes along with you on the phone. To me this is not the biggest deal in the world, but I think we can expect Apple to make sure that the user interface and physical design of the phone will be sexxxy.
The Forbes bit makes a big stink about Bluetooth enabling users to bypass high-price data networks and talks about a Verizon requirement that Motorola disable Bluetooth on a phone they developed for Verizon. The last two phones I’ve had both included Bluetooth, which enabled me to bypass the carrier network to exchange files with my Mac and PC. This isn’t a deal killer by any stretch, and a well-designed phone is only going to encourage customers to use the data functionality. Considering Apple’s experience with media content for digital devices I would suspect there would be plenty of data to fill up carriers spectrum for customers using this phone.
