What Jobs told me on the iPhone
Will Apple's chief executive unveil a tablet Mac or an 'iPhone' at Macworld next week? Former sales boss David Sobotta describes the meeting which explained key thinking
Thursday January 4, 2007
The Guardian .....
That was 2002. But let's examine the rumours that Apple will next week unveil a tablet computer or iPhone in light of Steve's comments that day.
The market for a converged computer and phone should be very attractive: Gartner forecast last year that 986m mobiles would be sold in 2006. And there's an "Apple gap": mobile phone users often find their interfaces confusing, even within the same brands. Apple's unique ability to simplify while innovating looks like a good fit there. Plus Apple's deal with Samsung means it is well placed for anything that needs lots of flash memory. It has played around with unique relationships with phone manufacturers: Jobs used a Sony Ericsson phone to demonstrate Bluetooth capability in July 2002, and showed off the Motorola ROKR, the first to play iTunes, in 2005. This fits Apple's pattern of learning what it needs to know through partnership before jumping into a market. Significantly, the first Powerbooks, in 1991, involved Sony. Now the companies' laptops compete, although Sony still makes the batteries. Logically, Apple will make its own phone if it is holding true to pattern.
But a tablet computer? Most analysts would agree the market is growing only slowly, mostly in the healthcare and other specialised industries, and that these models will make at most 5% of the laptop market by 2009 (they account for 1% now). Even Dell doesn't make its own tablet. Furthermore, the tablet was championed by Bill Gates. I don't see Steve stepping up to the plate to help Bill's reputation as a forecaster of computer trends.
I believe there are other reasons why Apple won't make a tablet computer. Even before the iPod gained momentum, Apple executives had a theory that the route to success will not be through selling thousands of relatively expensive things, but millions of very inexpensive things like iPods; and not necessarily computers. Tablet computers remain expensive. Yet the mobile phone market is almost perfect for Apple strategy. There is no real market leader, and it's ripe for simplification. Plus it's worldwide, and engineers from the network operators would be available to do localisation.
Apple might even be able to do a Java-based phone platform which could integrate into current systems. With a focus on simple mail and contact integration with its online .Mac (mac.com) service, Apple could provide advantages for early adopters while making its .Mac service better value (because it isn't right now). Few non-technical people consider doing anything other than transferring numbers to their new mobiles by typing. On anything other than a Mac, the process is just too complex. Apple already knows how to make this easy. It just needs to convince people to buy an Apple phone and a Mac.
Also anti-tablet is Apple's sales force, which often spends so much of its time forecasting what it's going to sell in a given quarter there's precious little time left to actually sell anything. Right now they sell everything from iPods to Xserve RAIDs. However, an Apple phone wouldn't need a new sales force. The network operators' sales force could handle it - probably cutting Apple sales people out of any new commission revenue for phones, much as they have done for the iPod.
Even if Apple partners only with a single national carrier it will get an immediate, huge retail presence.
What about a more targeted tablet - perhaps to control all the devices in your home entertainment stable? Traditionally, Apple stays away from markets where it cannot define all of the standards, so I really don't think Steve will devote resources to make non-Apple stuff work together. Even the vertical markets like healthcare suffer from this problem: too many pieces in a very complex puzzle.
So next week, I'm sure we won't see any kind of tablet computer from Apple. I am 99% confident we will see an Apple phone, with enhanced music capabilities and maybe a few computing features such as email and contacts synchronisation with Macs or through .Mac.
Steve's ability to know where consumers and technology will intersect often creates a road paved in gold. That's why he'll focus his energy on mobiles. The potential there that only Steve can see could well turn into another must-have product for the legions who don't even know they are part of Steve's army. They haven't met him across a table. But they've met the products of his thinking.
· David Sobotta was formerly the federal sales manager at Apple. His blog is at viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/
Link zum ges Artikel
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1981815,00.html
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