Apple to set loose five million ChiPhones The long-awaited Chinese iPhone will go on sale in September, and it has already added nearly $1.5bn to Cupertino's coffers. Or so says a report out of Beijing in Wednesday's International Business Times, which says that China Unicom has coughed up a cool 10bn yuan ($1.46bn) for 5 million iPhones. Five million ChiPhones would …
How are you going to stop talking about a mobile phone which smacked the other manufacturers so hard they are all playing catchup and saying 'me too'?
The iPhone for all its faults is still the de facto standard so, inevitably, comparisons will be made and that means talking about the iPhone.
Of course it's only a small percentage of world-wide sales ... that's Apple. But it's amazing the effect they have on the others ... just look at Windows latest copy of what Macs look like and the other mobile phone manufacturers who had a huge user base to begin with. Remember, Apple's iPhone was the 'New Kid on the Block'.
iPhone: who cares?
Lots and lots of people!
A tiny percentage? Maybe of phones in total. But in the first half of 2009 (before the 3GS launched), Apple commanded just over 13% of smartphone sales, just behind RIM (on 18.7%), and Nokia with 45%. Though that Nokia total includes all their S60 devices -- the majority of which are hardly purchased as 'smartphones'. Most people use them as featurephones in reality.
HTC where some way fuirther back in 4th place with 6%.
If Apple sell an extra 5 million phones to China next half (and assuming all other sales remain static), they'll move up to around 23%. Again, not too irrelevant.
While I don't have an iPhone, I'm certainly interested in news about it. Long may El Reg's coverage of the Jesus Phone continue...
"Its flagship high-end N97 smartphone met little enthusiasm at its launch in the second quarter of 2009, and has sold just 500,000 units in the channel since it started to ship in June, compared to Apple's iPhone 3G S, which sold 1 million units in its first weekend." (El Reg, today)
Nokia ... the world's BIGGEST phone seller.
They care!
"Isn't it about time people stopped talking about this phone, which represents just a tiny percentage of mobile phones world-wide?"
By that logic, Jimi Hendrix had only one song in the Top 20, so obviously people should quit trying to learn from his recordings and listen to Herman's Hermits because they sold a lot more records, right?
Look, the iPhone, love it or hate it, was a game changer. The smart phone market on 2007/01/01 was similar to the MP3 player market on 09/01/2001. There were several competing factors, the market was ready to take off but people didn't really like the phones or the interfaces outside of some enthusiasts, there were certain entrenched ideas holding back innovation, the areas where things were bad were areas that were Apple strengths, getting application for your phone was complicated and then getting them ONTO the phone wasn't always straightforward, and they rarely worked as expected, ...
Touch and the virtual keyboard are things that you don't realize how great they are until you can't use them, use them for a month, then have to go back to the old way. The iPhone changed the cell phone industry. I remember watching the keynote for it and it was a jaw-dropper because NOTHING worked like that at the time. In the back of my mind, I could hear the execs at Nokia and RIM saying a collective "Oh crap ..."
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