Apple Investor in the Wilderness

The Apple Investor Guide for the Rest of Us.

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About the Author

Zach Bass (a.k.a Ernie Varitimos) is Chief Bloviator of Investor in the Wilderness. He has 30 years experience as a Tech Maven, Investor and Consultant. Zach has been using Macs since their introduction in 1984, and investing in the markets just as long. His mission is to help guide all level of investors through the Apple Ecosphere and make sense of the markets. Zach's take on Apple, the markets, and life pursuits, will keep your mind tuned.

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Gartner, Industry Still Don’t Understand what Apple’s iPhone is About

September 8th, 2008 • Related • Filed Under

Today a Gartner report said global sales of smart phones grew 16% in Q2 of 2008, but sales were slowing, particularly the iPhone, where Apple’s share of global smartphone sales to end users decreased to 2.8 per cent from 5.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2008. But this was of course due to clearing the shelves for the iPhone 3G. The report cited that the current economic climate was a real drag on smartphones.

Roberta Cozza, principal analyst at Gartner. “…smartphone sales slowed down as a result of new compelling touch technology mainly available on enhanced phones (based on proprietary operating systems) rather than smartphones.”

“Wider availability of new touch smartphone models together with the global introduction of the iPhone 3G will help sales of smartphones return to stronger growth in the third quarter of 2008,” Ms Cozza said.

While this is all well and good, and bodes well for the iPhone, I have a problem with the notion that the iPhone should be lumped together with all the other smartphones. Sure it’s great that it’s blazing new markets and putting smartphones into the hands of more and more people. But how can you compare the iPhone to other smartphones, when they share so little in common? Mainly a cell phone, and some apps. But that’s not a fair comparison, comparing iPhone apps with other smartphones is like comparing Pong to Super Monkey Ball.

The problem is the phone part. Is the iPhone just a phone, with a whole bunch of other things attached to it, like email, GPS and the web? Is that what makes it smart? Or, is the iPhone a whole new mobile computing paradigm, the integration of mobile technologies, with advanced software and revolutionary mobile services? The iPhone is becoming, or already is, a de facto replacement for your laptop, or a full-fledged extension to your desktop. The iPhone is a phone, it’s a powerful computer with a polished and adaptable user interface, that just happens to integrate advanced communications capabilities.

The iPhone is not just any computer either. It’s a computer that shares the same brain as your Mac desktops, for that matter, the same brain as big iron servers that run enterprises. What I’m talking about is OS X. The point is that there’s a lot of space between a mobile phone and an enterprise server, yet with the iPhone they share the same foundation, and because of that they have many of the same capabilities.

What Apple is doing is creating a bridge. You know, like the way the great bridges of the world were constructed. They start from either end of a divide and meet in the middle. Well, that’s what Apple is doing with the iPhone and iPod Touch, the MacBook Air, the Touch interface, and other future devices. Apple is creating a bridge from which we will realize a new world of mobile computing.