With newcomers seemingly arriving by the week to challenge iPhone for the innovation crown, I am questioning if Apple can afford to update the iPhone merely once a year.
iPhone, since its introduction in 2007, has become an annual event dispite Apple and its carrier partners not saying anything about it. For its part, Apple has never divulge information for new products prior to launch. The original iPhone went on sale in the last weekend of June and since then, the iPhone 3G and the follow-up 3GS went on sale around June and July. So, it's safe to give the iPhone an annual product cycle.
I think Apple fans go to a good scare a year ago when RIM came out with Storm. Then in the months leading up to the Pre going on sale, many wondered if the iPhone 3G can compete against WebOS’ Synergy, something that the iPhone lacks.
Furthermore, the growing rift, or contrast, between Apple and Google, whether it is manufactured by the media and blogs or not, does highlight the difference in philosophies between these two innovative companies. While Apple makes no apologies for its walled garden approach, Google’s Android is generally open to developers and handset makers, within limits.
One of the starkest contrast is that the iPhone’s interface is uniform in iPhone 3.0 while Android allows handset makers to graft their own flavor of UI such as HTC’s Sense and Motorola Cliq’s MOTOBLUR. Oh, and let’s not forget Verizon Wireless' flagship mobile device, Droid.
And while near-term adoption for the iPhone remains positive, the sheer number of new Android devices coming to the market in the next few quarters, and the likely barrage of Window Mobile 7 devices will make the mobile market very crowded.
Thus, should Apple accelerate any product cycle for the iPhone and the Touch? Apple does have a couple of advantages that has made it difficult for competitors to overcome. The first is the 100K-strong app store. It is hard to dismiss the success of the app store with already 2 billion downloads. That’s something competitors would have a lot of difficulties overcoming. Still, Android won’t need to match the iPhone app for app. Even at a quarter or half the size of the iPhone app store, the Android Marketplace would be a success (AM should be closer to 20K apps by now).
While the app store is an advantage competitors can overcome in time, the second advantage the iPhone has will be more difficult to for Apple’s competitors to address. The iPhone “just works”. I’ve heard it many times said about the iPhone but never about any other devices.
Right now, I don’t sense any urgency from Cupertino for any need to make any changes to the annual iPhone upgrade schedule. But I do sense that iPhone's effects on the mobile market and the confusion and desperation it sowed on competitors has waned somewhat. At the very least, traditional handset makers have gotten used to the fact that the iPhone is here to stay (maybe except for Microsoft's Steve Balmer).
It doesn’t mean that Apple shouldn’t muddle things up a bit again or put more distance between itself and the rest of the market.
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