vIPod and other Apple stuff

The register's reporting that Quanta has been signed up to make the new video iPod and that the likely announcement date for the puppy is April 1st (Apple's 30th birthday). Another rumoured Apple product is an Apple phone. The guys at the Register don't think it's likely because that would require Apple to enter a whole new business. I don't agree.

A great example of how an outsider can enter the mobile phone market is Bang and Olufsen. Their Serene mobile phone was developed in a joint venture with Samsung. Basically, B&O designed the phone, samsung produced it and B&O's doing the distribution. I've seen the phone and love it. What's more important, the phone was released for christmas and even the biggest B&O stores have a backlog of orders for the phone that they don't expect to clear until the summer. (Having played with the phone for a short while, I can say I understand why... no phone since the Nokia 7110 has had a better opening mechanism - you nudge the phone to activate it and it then opens itself).

Apple could pull this off together with Motorola but... the problem that Apple will face is that they have gotten used to mass marketing with the iPod while an iPhone would never have the immediate market appeal of the iPod. This means that the sales figures of the phone would always seem like a dissapointment.

Apple would also need to think long and hard about how they could differentiate themselves. I guess their best shot would be a media phone with a few gigs of storage space, wifi and a big screen, maybe as wide and long as a Sony-Ericsson P910. A device like that would have a good shot at competing with the media phones put out by Samsung and Nokia.

The 'intermediate device' battlefield shapes up

Engadget is reporting that Philips has released its own reader device

The Philips release rounds out a newly formed submarket: that for the 'intermediate' device. As far as I know, noone's come out and named this market segment but there's a variety of poducts and form factors already competing in this market.


Let's start off with the market characteristics. First of all intermediate devices are characterised by their for factor. They're bigger than PDA's but smaller than tablets. As things stand, they lack an input device other than a stylus although some have on-screen keyboards. Most (not all) have some for of network capability. All the devices are geared towards information consumption and a small amount of information management.

The striking thing about this segment is that it's being approached from three directions. On the one hand you have Microsoft pushing its Ultra Mobile PC platform trying to extend the desktop to a new part of the market. On the other hand you have Philips with the Irex Iliad and Sony with the Reader coming into the market with a consumer electronics approach, basically making a text display device. And then you have Nokia with the 770 internet tablet with a web browsing tablet.

It's strange to see that you have three different (groups of ) companies approaching an (as yet) unidentified market segment. My guess is that all three feel that users need to have a device more capable than a phone or PDA to view text/media. My major problem with the idea is that it's one more gadget to lug along. On the one hand the non-microsoft devices have a head start because they have far better power characteristics (the Sony and Philips devices can work for a week between charges) and are 'instant-on'. Microsoft on the other hand has the advantage of being able to run all your standard desktop software, like skype. On the other hand, the devices are expensive, boot at the same rate as XP and don't have overly extended battery lives.

My take is that the Philips product has the best shot at creating some new space - with the device's network connectivity giving it an advantage over the Sony device.