iPhone - A Product that Changes User Behaviors

Apple's iPhone is a unique product in many aspects.
(http://www.apple.com/iphone/)

The first release of iPhone on June 29, 2007 did not have all the bells and whistles. It was a GSM phone with EDGE for Internet connection. It did not have a GPS and its 2 mega-pixel camera could not shoot videos. It was pricy ($499 for the 4GB version and $599 for the 8GB version) and locked with one carrier, AT&T. However, this product changed the cell phone industry overnight.

One of my friends got his iPhone and activated it. The second day he and his wife were on their way to Chicago for vacation. Before, they would have brought maps for the places they were going to visit and planned the routes before arriving in the city. Not this time! They logged all the points of interest in a note in the phone and used Google Map any time they felt like it. When they found something interesting during the trip and wanted to find out more before improvising on the itinerary, the Internet browser and search engines were in the pocket with them all the time.

What is dramatic about this? This friend of mine had never subscribed any data service for cell phone before that day, and he had hardly expressed any interest in using such a service for mobile applications. This is the main-stream attitude of US consumers towards their beloved cell phones. Yet iPhone had him converted. There were hundreds of millions of savvy Internet users waiting for the cell phone industry to enable them to do what they have been doing for a decade. The killer application that the industry dreamed about is not anything new. It is the enabler to mobilize what people are doing day in and day out. Apple got it and Apple got the glory, mind share, and profit, of course.

I will blog a little more about iPhone and continue to watch Apple's next move. In the meantime, it will be interesting to see what Google's Open Handset Alliance can do to the market. After all, user experience comes as a total package, so is the cell phone.