Fun drives iPhone inevitability?

I found that this article by Matt Asay on CNET.com that claims The inevitability of the iPhone struck a chord with me. Specifically:

The iPhone "just works," and then some. I thought I wouldn't be able to type on the iPhone without tactile feedback. I was wrong. I'm actually faster on the iPhone than I ever was on the Blackberry, and that's with only an hour of "training." I thought I would miss a host of things with my Blackberry, but I haven't. Instead, I've been blown away by the innovative use of gestures and the user interface. I resisted the iPhone for a year or so, but looking back it was inevitable that I'd end here. It is the best-designed phone that I've ever seen or used.

As someone who is carrying both a Blackberry and an iPhone with him nowadays, I'm struck by how different the two experiences are. Not surprisingly, when I use the Blackberry, it feels like work; when I use the iPhone, it's fun. We'll see if that persists when the iPhone grows enterprise email access, but I suspect it will. After all, what good is an Anywhere device if you avoid using it because it feels too much like work?

How the iPhone SDK is reshaping mobile application development

Eugene Signorini, Andrew Jaquith, and I wrote a Yankee Group Decision Note analyzing the Apple iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) announcement last week; clients will probably see it in our published research sometime next week. But despite that note being more than 2,000 words, I'm still finding new insights from other writers on the topic. Today's harvest includes some commentary from Michael Mace, who declares that Apple gets it right. Michael's been on my mobile Web Sites interview list because he's an authority on many aspects of the mobile market and business strategy, and I think his comments on the intersection of mobile apps and the iPhone are particularly interesting:

I think it's likely that web apps will eventually displace most native mobile apps, because the addressable market will be so much larger. But eventually can take a long time, and if anyone can buck the trend it'll be Apple. They have created by far the best overall proposition for mobile developers on any platform in the US or Europe, and I hope they'll do very well for a long time.

Apple is challenging the rest of the mobile industry to compete on its terms. It will be very interesting to see how the other mobile vendors react, Nokia and Microsoft in particular. Nokia seems to be focused on a strategic positioning activity around seeing who can collect the most runtimes, while Apple is solving real developer and user problems. It's a striking contrast.

Blogging on the Yankee Group Web site

For those interested in my official Yankee Group comments, I've just started posting on the Yankee Group Blog site (http://blogs.yankeegroup.com). My first post is here. So given that I'll be writing in two places, I'll ask the question of readers: do you want me to cross post my articles here as well, or leave this blog for other topics that don't really fit into the Yankee mold? Leave a comment if you have an opinion on the matter.

Anywhere services need redundancy, not single points of failure

I've got to chime in with Jon Gruber of Daring Fireball on this: No matter how much Research in Motion promotes their NOC approach to running its Blackberry service, it's still a single point of failure for all Blackberry subscribers. And given that this weakness has been demonstrated to Blackberry subscribers with two multi-hour outages in the last 11 months, at some point, businesses are going to scream "Fix it!" I'm surprised someone from the high-availability computing world hasn't pilloried RIM already.

For those who don't think RIM's outages are any big deal, here's a fun fact. If RIM were trying to meet a 99.999% availability for its Blackberry service, the three-hour outage on February 12, 2008 would have used up its allowed downtime for the next 34 years. Oops.

It's easy to forget that until the Internet came along and demonstrated that distributed and decentralized networks really were more reliable, most of the major computer companies built networks with centralized command and control systems, yet those networks never achieved anything like the resilience of the Internet. It's a shame Anywhere business customers using Blackberrys are going to have to learn that lesson again the hard way. It's not a question of if that will happen; it's a question of when.

Meanwhile, everyone who wants to avoid the Anywhere school of hard knocks should repeat after me:

I will not accept single points of failure in my Anywhere service.

I will not accept single points of failure in my Anywhere service.

I will not accept single points of failure in my Anywhere service.

....

Did the iPhone SDK mean Apple will corner the Anywhere device market?

GottaBeMobile.com has an interesting claim that Apple's SDK announcement yesterday may have an unexpected result:

Apple opened a big door with the announcement and shut quite a few others in the process. Apple not only took the UMPC/MID market away, it will own mobile for some time to come, with everyone else playing catch up. The race to the top is over. Now everyone else can scramble to figure out who is number two.

[From GottaBeMobile.com]

So here's how I'm going to gauge whether this is happening or not: track the sales of Asus Eee PC at Amazon. If they fall off a cliff, Apple killed the segment. But given the incredible diversity of developers and users, some of whom have not interest in iPhones or Apple, I suspect they'll do just fine. The key to thinking about Anywhere products is that people have many different requirements for how they will use and buy mobile devices. No one company can meet all those needs, no matter how wonderful the device.

Of course, that doesn't mean that Apple won't make a whole lot of money trying.