Today the long awaited 3G iPhone with integrated GPS-receiver goes on sale globally. Expectations are high and sales will undoubtedly beat all records following another perfectly executed Apple marketing campaign. However, it is also becoming clear that despite the many improvements, the iPhone still suffers from some major shortcomings: no Bluetooth stereo support, video clips can still not be shot and more importantly a short battery life – shorter than its predecessor due to the added 3G and GPS functionality. Unfortunately, in this case, the streamlined monolithic design of the iPhone fires back: the fixed built-in battery cannot be replaced by a spare one.
However, the new iPhone hardware is not even the biggest news. A new iPhone applications store is launched at the same time with already more than 500 applications, many of which available for free. And Apple has done everything right, linking it to the iTunes store – already known by a large number of consumers – and making it very easy to download and install applications addressing issues the smartphone world has been struggling with for so long: third party application discovery and installation. However, Jobs has stated that no profit objectives are linked to the applications store, the sole purpose being to sell more iPhones. Quite different from Nokia’s strategy moving into content, applications and services as a business in its own right.
When looking closer at the application library, LBS applications are prominently present. Friend finder and location-based mobile social networking application and service developers such as Where (Buddy Beacon), Pelago (Whrrl), Loopt, GyPSii and BrightKite have all hurried to have their iPhone compatible versions ready for the launch today, many of them happy to piggy-back on Apple’s marketing campaign and getting their own press releases out.
So, what is so special about the iPhone as far as LBS applications are concerned? Well, it combines an excellent GPS receiver with a very intuitive touch screen based user interface which is very relevant for mapping-based applications as it allows to easily move the map by just dragging it, selecting items on the map and have quick access to menu items. This becomes very clear when watching this YouTube video clip made available by Where. When using LBS applications when on the move, this is precisely the kind of experience users expect.
We may well see the iPhone having a similar impact on LBS as it had on mobile web browsing: nothing short of (re) defining the category! Despite the relatively low number of iPhones out there – 6 million and counting - compared to Nokia’s anticipated 100 million GPS-phones to be sold this year – it does attract data users eager to experiment with new applications. A few million additional LBS users could make all the difference in the still emerging LBS market.
But what about navigation? Navigation applications have been held off by Apple up to now, presumably because they want to reap the profits of this killer application themselves. And indeed, the iPhone has a sufficiently large touch screen to be able to compete with Personal Navigation Devices.
So, what does this mean for Nokia? Well, they have not been sitting still, recently acquiring social activity site Plazes and launching the very promising Nokia Chat yesterday – in beta – a presence and location-based chat and friend finder application linked with Nokia Maps and integrated in the Ovi service provisioning platform. However, despite all the good initiatives, Nokia has an important lesson to learn from Apple: however good your products are, in the end in the consumer space it’s all about the user experience, marketing, communication and branding.
Whatever has been said about Apple and the iPhone, credit has to be given to them for their leading role in revolutionizing the mobile experience. Not surprisingly, we had to wait for a real marketing company to accomplish this.
