Dear Blogosphere,
Shut up about the iPhone.
I don’t want to hear it.
I am already totally over the iPhone, and won’t even see one until 2008, at the earliest. See, Dear Blogosphere, not all of us live in the US of A.
Not all of are effected by the apparent revolution caused by some people strapping a cell phone onto an iPod and hooking it up to a network that barely works.
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It does seem apparent that Apple is going to do to the mobile phone market what they did to the MP3 player market. If they can survive the telecommunications companies – all reports are saying that AT&T are really dropping the ball. In the music market, Apple could get traction without playing directly with the Record Companies, because people already had music collections. Once the iPod took-off, Apple had some leverage to play with. In the telecommunications world, things are very different … you can’t have an iPhone without the network, which means playing with the telcos. Australia’s equivalent of AT&T, Telstra, has a long history of customer abuse and mismanagement, but it’s the dominant player (read: only player in some areas of Australia) and Apple may be forced to deal with them.
I saw my first iPhone last week at Origins. A friend had just bought it.
It is a nifty little device and, in MidWest America at least, a chick magnet.
I’m not so sure Telstra matters that much. They might have coverage in some outback areas, but are farmers the target market for the iPhone?
I would think Virgin, Vodafone and 3 with their young and hip advertising would appeal to the kind of people who want iPhones. However, I suppose that if Telstra doesn’t play well with Apple, your iPhone might only be usable where 3G coverage is available from your provider’s network or something like that? Here in Adelaide, I suppose that would mean you could only use your iPhone at the airport or in the CBD, unless of course you don’t intend to use it as a phone, just as a gimmick for people to ooh and ahh over.