The iPhone is White Label Hardware

http://dbreunig.tumblr.com/post/120243478/the-iphone-is-white-label-hardware-with-the

by dbreunig • 17 years ago

48 61 17 years ago

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jonknee3• 17 years ago

Except for all the artificial limitations (no background processes is a huge let down) and the fact that Steve Jobs can crush your iPhone businesses if he chooses.

jodrellblank2• 17 years ago

How is it a let down? For two years, two releases, two versions of software and one beta of OS 3 it hasn't been present. It's only ever been mentioned by Apple to say they aren't doing it, and always they've been discussing, advertising and working on push notifications as an alternative.

Given all that, why were you in any way expecting it?

jonknee3• 17 years ago

I didn't say I was expecting it, only that it's a bummer that it's not there.

jm44• 17 years ago

Maybe because it's possible on competing smartphones?

I was curious about the new features in IPhone OS 3 and decided to take a look at the list. Copy and paste? MMS? Voice memos? Search? You've got to be kidding me. The competition has had that stuff for ages.

If Apple couldn't deliver that stuff on day one that's fine, but it should have been released in an update shortly afterward. It's absurd that 2 years later people are still waiting for basic functionality that's been available elsewhere the whole time.

Don't get me wrong. Although I choose not to use the iPhone, I still like it. Despite the fact that it does some very basic things badly or not at all, it does have some neat features and has driven the competition to work a little harder. The iPhone made mobile app stores commonplace. The 'find my phone' and 'remote wipe' features are very cool and I haven't seen those on another phone. I'm looking forward to how the competition responds.

What does bother me, though, is all the Apple apologists coming out of the woodwork to brush all of their faults under the rug. Apple does some good things and some not so good things. In my opinion, a lot of the features in this update are things that people should not still be waiting for. I also think we don't need to be in the habit of excusing the lack of background applications. We're so fond of innovation, yet this missing features prevents the kind of innovation happening on other platforms.

aaronblohowiak• 17 years ago

AT&T lock-in is one of the larger barriers preventing the universality of the iPhone as "the" mobile computing platform.

dbreunig4• 17 years ago

Very true. It's a huge hinderance. However, the international audience of the device cannot be ignored. Neither can the huge base of iPod Touches.

yhnbgty• 17 years ago

The international audience is the problem with iPhone. You can finally now get it in Canada (a year late) and the UK.

GHFigs9• 17 years ago

The author means universal in the sense of a universal remote control, not universal adoption. Also, a big chunk of that 40 million is iPod Touch owners, who are not subject to carrier lock-in.

The point is that it is a sufficiently generic and popular platform that many companies that might once have rolled their own hardware have diminished need to. If the platform supports what they need and they can make do in a market of 40 million (and growing), why not? For consumers it is the same way; why buy a device when you can just download that functionality? It raises the threshold of utility.

The market doesn't have to be universal, it just has to be big and and consistent. Right now the iPhone is the only platform that can claim to have both of those qualities.

sunkencity• 17 years ago

Yeah, comparing the iPhone to the horror of making a J2ME application the iPhone is truly the currently best device for applications.

Silentio• 17 years ago

Totally agree. I don't have an iPhone (can't afford a data plan at the moment) but want one. Something feels wrong about being locked in to any one carrier for service though. My main PC isn't locked into anything. As long as the market I live in gives me choices of internet service providers, I get to choose. Does anyone know if we'll see a more open environment in cellphone service (data, voice, etc) in the near future?

rictic• 17 years ago

It's my understanding that you can buy an iPhone without a contract, it's just ~$600 more expensive. Visual voicemail is right out on other carriers though. 3G might work though, depending on your carrier.

cubicle67• 17 years ago

AT&T lock-in is only a problem in the US, remember. Here in Australia the iPhone is available from 4 different carriers (Telstra, Vodafone, Virgin and Optus) and the fifth carrier offers plans for unlocked phones as well.

jmtulloss2• 17 years ago

Apple's hardware isn't appropriate for every situation. If it were to be white label, they would need to make the software available to other hardware developers, and that's never going to happen.

This article is more about software than hardware, the apps largely don't care what hardware it's running on.

upinsmoke• 17 years ago

Your sentence doesn't make any sense, you start with "Apple's hardware" then you talk about "make the software available to other hardware developers". Do you mean hardware accessories for iPhone? It's in 3.0.

jmtulloss2• 17 years ago

What? No. I mean they would need to make the software (iPhone OS 3.0) available to 3rd party hardware developers in order to have a "white label" platform.

mcantor6• 17 years ago

Full disclosure: I recently purchased a T-Mobile Android-powered G-1, with which I am more than a little enamored. Feel free to discard the following post as fanboy tripe.

Couldn't this article have just as easily been written about the G-1, or certain models of Blackberry? (Especially since Android is open-source. Isn't it?) It disturbs me when Apple products are treated like the exclusive apotheosis of their niche. I remember reading an article in which the journalist blathered spastically about "iPod-jacking," the paradigm-breaking practice of two people swapping headphones on their iPod to see what the other is listening to.

Huh???

ANY pair of MP3 players could accomplish the same thing, just like any modern wi-fi/GPS/accelerometer/etc. enabled smartphone could accomplish what this article is talking about.

Also, I have an open question: I'm perplexed by people who criticize Apple for keeping apps out of the store. Aren't you free to publish your app on your own website, which any user can navigate to, and install your app from there? Are people angry because, if Apple doesn't let you in the app store, you're almost definitely going to get less customers? (That's a fair thing to be angry about). Or... are people angry because, if you get kicked out of the app store, no one can install your app AT ALL?

jonknee3• 17 years ago

"Aren't you free to publish your app on your own website, which any user can navigate to, and install your app from there?"

No. Which is why having a gate keeper at the store is so frustrating.

There are three ways to distribute--iTunes store, ad hoc (limited to 100 device IDs per app and is designed to use for testing) and enterprise which only works for corporate accounts and is limited to devices inside your company.

mcantor6• 17 years ago

Then how do you develop for the iPhone, without being able to install the app you're developing on your own device?

dbreunig4• 17 years ago

Author here.

I agree with you: the G1 (and G2!) is a very capable device. As Android is adopted by more and more device manufacturers, Android could very well become a ubiquitous, ambient computing environment.

The reason I focus on the iPhone is for two reasons. First off: it's hardware. No matter how good the G1 is, the crux of the phone is it's OS. That's the standard being pushed in that case. With the iPhone, they're pushing the hardware and software standard.

Second (and this is by far the larger reason) is the install base. There's 40,000,000 iPhones and iPod touches in the market! The ubiquity and large adoption of this device is why it's "White Label." People already have it. For comparison, as of Jan 09 the X-Box 360 had ~28 million units in market. A large % of which might not even be on X-Box Live.

The penetration of the iPhone is what makes it special in this case.

mcantor6• 17 years ago

I think I see what you were getting at now, about the market penetration. I still don't really understand your point about hardware vs. software. The G-1 and iPhone are both pieces of hardware with pre-packaged software on them. Is there really anything the iPhone's hardware is capable of that the G-1 isn't, in some profound way? They both have wi-fi, GPS, accelerometer, calculator, touch screen, etc.

The iPhone really has become startlingly popular; I think I had a knee-jerk reaction to your article because Apple's incredible aptitude for branding always makes me a little queasy. People get so excited about Apple that and Apple this, that functional alternatives like the G-1 and Blackberry go unnoticed, and in the end, the market suffers because consumers are complacent instead of asking, "Can't it be better?"

breck• 17 years ago

40M iphone devices have been sold, but I'm not sure if there are 40M active iphones out there.

I would guess 2-7M or so are not being used(broken or cast aside by the owner when they upgrade).

Small nitpicky point, but just came to mind.

GHFigs9• 17 years ago

Couldn't this article have just as easily been written about the G-1, or certain models of Blackberry?

Android is not a large enough market for anyone to target exclusively. The Blackberry has inconsistent hardware capabilities, which fragments the large market it has.

The advantages that each of those platforms has just don't matter in achieving the kind of success that Apple has had with the iPhone platform in the way that the author describes.

akirk2• 17 years ago

I just don't get why Apple doesn't just sell a higher-priced, unlocked iPhone, so that you don't have to get yourself screwed by your local carrier.

dbreunig4• 17 years ago

As always: business. AT&T is effectively paying Apple to prevent that very scenario.

AT&T is weathering the downturn relatively nicely thanks to their exclusive deal with Apple. The ~$200 check they cut Apple per 2-year contract is paying for that exclusivity plus like-advertising.

akirk2• 17 years ago

Sometimes I just wish that they would focus more on the customers' needs :)

cujo• 17 years ago

I believe you can get one from ATT unlocked without a plan, but the price is way up there. I believe $600 and $800 for the 2 models.

That was for the 3G though. I don't know if they still do it for the 3GS.

martey• 17 years ago

I found no-commitment pricing at http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=1574:

iPhone 3G: $499 (8GB) and $549 (16GB)

iPhone 3GS: $599 (16GB) and $699 (32GB)

symesc• 17 years ago

Oh FSM I love it when someone gets it exactly right!

JimmyL• 17 years ago

It's an interesting argument the author is making, but it sure sounds like it's a bit of a reach at this point. Sure, the iPhone has nice market penetration in a certain demographic (who are more likely than others to buy gizmos) but I strongly doubt that you'll see companies that would have otherwise developed hardware, not do so. Instead, I think you'll see the flourishing of products with small enough niches such that if they had to build their own hardware, the product would have been shelved. This section:

Even established businesses seemed to disprove their own divisions: as tomtom showed off their upcoming navigation software I was left wondering why they need to make their own devices anymore.

is the epitome of that reach. Why does TomTom need to make their own devices any more? Because they don't want to add in an implicit $60/month data fee to use their service, which you have when it's iPhone based. Because if it's strictly iPhone, you can't give it to your parents as a gift so they stop getting lost. Because they make some nice margins off their high-end hardware, which they can't on an iPhone. Because they don't want to limit themselves to the (comparatively) small demographic of people with an iPhone who drive in an area with a cellular data connection, as opposed to the much larger one of people who drive cars that have 12V accessory plugs.

Likewise with the ZipCar application - they're not going to go iPhone-only, since it's giving up free market share. So they'll add an iPhone interface for coolness purposes and to appeal to a certain demo (which they probably do pretty well with already), but it won't fundamentally change their business plan.

The Pasco demo (focusing on teaching science to kids) also seemed somewhat contrived - who's gonna outfit a lab with iPhones to do readings? More importantly, what makes more sense for a school board buying a new lab's worth of equipment - buying sensor packages that work with a dedicated ruggedized central station that the school owns, or buying ones that require all students to have and use expensive and relatively flimsy cell phones of one particular brand?

So yes, I think that the iPhone represents an interesting new platform and will enable some new business opportunities (especially at the small end of the busines ecosystem), but it's not going to cause the end of all commercial customized hardware.

The iPhone is White Label Hardware

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