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While I don't visit airports often, I do see a lot of musicians in my business (repairing instruments), most of whom use cellular phones. The iPhone is far and away #1 with these people. I don't see any Blackberries among my clients - my little brother is a film director and he uses one of those, as do most around him. Many musicians also use Mac computers, and one seems to follow the other, though the penetration of the iPhone in this sector seems to have outpaced the Mac by quite a large percentage - many of my clients use a Mac, but lots of others use a PC.
As for why, it seems fairly obvious that the two reasons already mentioned are fundamental; pricing and marketing, which in this case blend together somewhat. A good WM phone with a screen anywhere nearly as nice as that of the iPhone (size for ease of finger use and viewing pleasure, pixel count for the latter, colour saturation in any sort of ambient light) costs a small fortune. Any idiot with slightly better than minimum wage income can pick up an iPhone with a cellular contract. Bingo - market a shiny, pretty toy to everyone, make it affordable, then reap the rewards in data plan costs and long term contracts.
Microsoft's $#!T poor marketing has been a perennial topic as far back as I can remember in PPC forums. Seems we were ranting about that back in 2000, when the subject was 'how can Microsoft take some of Palm's market share?' Palm gradually, inevitably failed, through their own lack of foresight in terms of feature upgrades and a stale OS. No lack of out and out marketing there, just device interest failure. Microsoft had virtually nothing to do with it. Just lucky.
But the iPhone presents a different challenge. An iPhone can do things this week which it couldn't do last week, and will do even more things next week, all thanks to the abundance of developers just leaping at this opportunity gone wild. So what if most of these new applications are pure garbage? It doesn't matter. Some of them are golden. I've been impressed more than a few times with the clever integration of finger-operability, beautifully rendered and cleverly designed graphics, and simple, does what it's supposed to do functionality of some of these apps. And they're cheap, or free, like the iPhone itself. People like cheap and free. People generally do not like $30 or more for a file explorer or a text editor or a media player... etc. Handango and PocketGear have long since encouraged inflationary pricing on apps for Windows Mobile devices, and even developers who sell independently tend too often to charge inordinate fees for simple functionality. Add the cost of a handful of WM apps ($100+) to the cost of an average iPhone-league device ($500+) and the $600 or more is going to put a lot of people off before they even get started.
Then there's that enduring charm of Apple simplicity. Whether it translates into depth of utility for the power user is irrelevant. Power users are not the market being sought. Oh sure, Apple is happy to sell to corporations, and in some businesses they are doing just fine at that job. Other businesses won't be interested because Windows Mobile devices are the only things capable of performing certain tasks. Apple need not shed any tears here, as they're covering the rest of the world's population nicely, from householders wanting a convenient recipe book in their pocket (which happens to let them update their Twitter account while baking muffins!) to school kids wanting to be just as cool as other school kids to commuters who want to watch music videos on the subway to just about anyone else you can think of.
The iPhone 'gets it' in a way the Pocket PC/Windows Mobile Smartphone does not, in terms of the everyman. We can sit around resenting that, or try to ignore it, but I've also watched as one by one, WM device users around me have become iPhone users, and have seen how they smile, how they positively glow, showing off the gee whiz tricks their big beautiful screens can display. And the tricks the microphone brings into the fray make it a whole lot more fun. Simplicity is not to be discounted too lightly. The iPhone makes loads of user-desired functions, whether social network related or just personal, a breeze to implement.
So far I remain un-tempted. There are just too many things a Windows Mobile device can do for me, too many programs I've long since become addicted to using and for which there are no Apple analogues. But for many this is not the case. Jumping ship seems so, so easy for them. The guy I bought my current HTC Elfin from was positively glowing at the ease of use his shiny new iPhone offered, after years of struggling with lockups and glitches with WM phones. He is far from alone in this. Microsoft needs to wake up, stop being stubborn about listening to users, and get with the program. Or lose this war. It's that simple.
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