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Originally Posted by Tye
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Originally Posted by barky81
Once the iPodders start buying iPhones, they WON'T be in the market for annual upgrades to new iPods.
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Why not? I generally buy one PPC per year and one phone per year. Combined, they are about the same price as this.
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Originally Posted by barky81
I would assume the v2 iPhone will show significant storage increase.
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Agreed again, but at 8gb, it's enough storage for many people. I do know some who carry around 60gb of music but I know a lot more who carry only 4gb. I have a 2gb card in my PPC and it carries a lot of stuff! 8gb would be a huge leap for me.
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Originally Posted by barky81
But if Apple thinks people will swap out $600 phones more often than every two years (contracts are contracts), they are about to find out phones are different.
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I strongly disagree with this. A lot of people swap phone/PDA combos often, even at the expensive prices.
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Originally Posted by barky81
In fact, even though my Cingular 8125 does EVERYTHING the iPhone does, I recently bought a Zune...
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I have a PPC6700 which does pretty much everything I want it to do too. I agree with you there. My problem with the PPC WM5 platform is that it's still not easy to do a lot of this stuff. It works, yes. But it's not always simple. That's one place where I hope Apple will leap ahead.
barky81, I promise I was not picking on your post. You just happened to hit on a number of items that I've wanted to comment on.
I'm not an "Apple Fanboy." The only Apple product I've ever owned is Newtons. You could, however, call me a "Newton Fanboy." |
As I have said to someone else...you are comparing niche to mass market items. The "early adopter gadget freak" market is a niche market. You say people will be happy to shell out $600 a year on an upgraded iPhone when Apple's success has been based on getting them to shell out $100 to $300 on a new iPod while they flash their $99 RAZRs for 2 years...
Re: 2gig/4gig/8gig as "storage". The reason so many iPods are half-full is that iTunes costs a LOT! A thousand tracks is $1,000! Big investment....
With a subscription model, $15/month is UNLIMITED. I filled up my 30gig Zune in about 4 hours the first night I got it....if I play with it all year, and swap out hundreds of tracks every month...the total annual investment is $180...heck, throw in the $250 for the device, and it's still less than HALF.
This scenario does NOT bode well for Apple's current model...Oh and final storage observation is that you omitted VIDEO in your sizing requirements.
In summary, the Zune Subscription model is really going to disrupt Apple's current strategy. I can only assume that the iPhone is targeted to combat that (over time perhaps--you know, strategic roadmap, etc.) by (1) first selling as phone; (2) then converting to subscription iTunes; (3) then upselling the phones with significant storage increases...say that takes 2 years from June...what then?
Maybe Microsoft's biggest problem is it's (pardon the secret pun to come) own size. If it were nimble enough, they could basically glue an Cingular 8125 to the back of the Zune (throw in a little integration) and CRUSH Apple...
Will they? Don't know.
Could they? Absolutely.
After all, the Zune is $249, and the 8125 is $99
(Edit: WRONG, it's $149) with a 2-year contract, so the comparable total is $348
($398). (And that gives you access to the Zune subscription service.) Heck, they could weld the Zune to the 8525 (3G!) for $648
(Edit: WRONG, it's $598) total...
Perhaps that part of why Apple partnered with Cingular/ATT...
Now, if only Microsoft would just BUY Sprint and accelerate its WiMax rollout, throw down it's own "zPhone" ("answer zee phone") and drive that splintery old stake home once and for all...that would be a good day.