Wise Buddha

We’ve been on a bit of a roll recently about cell phones so thought we’d drop a few thoughts about Apple’s entry into the cell hardware market. What’s more interesting to us is that we are watching the evolution of a small niche computer manufacturer into a fully fledged consumer products business.

That aside it is useful to cut through the fawning over exitement that seems to surround most Apple launches these days and evaluate what impact Apple is likley to have. There is no doubt that the tech specs are impressive and as we all know Apple knows a thing or to about design (Note to PC makers can’t one of you head hunt one of Apple’s senior designers?) but what is the outlook?

Here’s what Jeff Kagan had to say…

‘Several million iPhones will be great news for Apple, but I don’t think at this point it will make a big difference to the industry competitors’ Jeff Kagan, Kagan Research

and as for Forrester they had a somewhat sniffy perspective

“It’s not necessarily going to be a threat for the Nokias of this world to start with,” says Niek van Veen, associate analyst with researchers Forrester.

When you plug in the numbers it quickly becomes apparent that even if Apple sell 10 million iPhone’s they will have done well but that’s small beer compared to the units Nokia and Motorola shift, put it this way Motorola have sold over 50 million Razr’s alone!

Having said that congrats to Apple for delivering on a long anticpated product initiative and doing it with style and raising the bar in the category. If nothing else we hope that this level of innovation pushes the likes of Motorola to create more user friendly menu sytems and take a page out of the Apple ease of book. Of all the brands out there it might be Sony and their Walkman brand who are hit the most.