I’m not quite sure I understand all the annoyance at the moment over the new iPhone.
As I see it, things go like this:
* November 2007 – Apple and O2 release the iPhone in the UK and sell 18 month contracts.
* July 2008 – Apple and O2 release the 3G version of the iPhone in the UK and sell more 18 month contracts. People on the original contracts are allowed to upgrade but they must take out new contracts, and I believe extend them by the original “missing” bit. That means 2 years plus for some people if they upgraded in July that year.
* June 2009 – Apple and O2 release the 3G S version of the iPhone in the UK. There’s no early upgrade procedure, so short of buying yourself out of the contract, a current 3G customer is going to have to wait at least seven months, and quite possibly longer if they want the new version without incurring a significant upgrade cost.
This seems to have caused quite a bit of fuss.
I’m really not sure why. Of course, we all want the latest phone. But we have to pay for it.
Nokia releases a new phone every five minutes. My current phone is on an eighteen month contract. I knew what I was doing when I signed up. I’ll just have to wait that contract out before I upgrade.
I’m well aware that this time next year Apple will have another new phone out. And the same each year thereafter – possibly more frequently. Pay through the nose, or realise that you can’t always have the latest phones all the time.
There’s a wider question about our consumer society and the difference between “want” and “need” anyway. Unless the phone’s broken, do we really have to upgrade every five minutes?
But back to phones. I suppose I’m more disappointed that Apple and O2 have seen fit to remain exclusive. That means that O2 can charge what it likes since there’s no competition – and it’s a lot. And it also means that a large proportion of the population can’t upgrade to the iPhone without changing networks.
I’ve said before, and I’ll say again, I’m not changing networks for a phone. An inexact analogy would be only able to use Esso fuel with a Mercedes.
And with the Palm Pre also going to O2 exclusively, it really does mean a topsy-turvy situation in the UK smartphone market. As I said previously, if I was an O2 customer and wanted a smartphone would I really not have already bought an iPhone? Because it’s the remainder that O2 are chasing now. And the Palm Pre is just as much a premium smartphone as the iPhone.
That should leave the way open for others to try to take advantage. Nokia would be the obvious candidate – although it’s having its own issues with networks getting upset when it installs things like Skype on some of its new phones.
But the real advantage must flow to Google’s Android OS. With four networks, as well as O2 able to sell Android devices, that means that it could (and should) quickly overtake Apple’s market share.
As yet, devices in the UK have been thin on the ground with just a single T-Mobile handset and the recent Vodafone HTC Magic launch. There’s always the promise of lots more phones coming soon, but I must admit that I’m surprised that more aren’t here yet.
Perhaps, like Apple, it’s taking Google a little longer than they thought to build a truly robust phone.
Competition can only be good, and with some top quality alternative phones emerging, we can only hope for the best.