iPhone’s Untapped Market: “Consumer Smartphones”

iPhone Features

Every now and then someone complains about the iPhone being more about the iPod, the “breakthrough Internet device,” and the widgets and less about the phone.

Nerds of the North blogger Oliver Rist, in his post on why the iPhone sucks, says “Apple is making such a big deal out of the multimedia capabilities of these things, that the phone part is really secondary.”

But that’s exactly the point. Apple saw an opportunity in the fact that most consumer phones today are just that… phones.

Sure, newer devices like LG’s Chocolate have brought MP3 players into the mobile mix, but most cell phone user interfaces are still, for the most part, not as user-friendly as they could (and should) be.

Apple sought to change things with the iPhone by offering a consumer smartphone with a more intuitive user interface. Key word: consumer.

Rist says, “Okay, it’s a smartphone, but with none of the features that make the other smartphones popular with business road warrior types.”

But iPhone is not intended to be a business phone. By appealing to consumers rather than businesspersons with the iPhone, Apple is tapping an entirely new market: the consumer smartphone market.

I don’t have to be a businessman anymore to want a smartphone. Now I can own a kick-ass mobile phone with my iPod, computer, and widgets all bundled into one…

just ’cause I feel like it, not because my boss wants to be able to reach me at all times.

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