Thread: N900 and USA market (T-Mobile)
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sachin007 is offline sachin007
2009-09-05 , 06:00
Posts: 2,041 | Thanked: 1,066 times | Joined on Mar 2006 @ Houston
#57
Originally Posted by ysss View Post
This is one dimensional thinking. It takes more than just lower price to make a product as appealing as Apple (or RIM's offering). A plain 'ol smartphone doesn't take what it takes to conquer the market, imho.

RIM has all the real-time enterprise messaging angle covered. They do their lock-ins one enterprise at a time.

And on the iPhone?
- iPod (yes, the media player on the iphone is called the ipod and gives 100% functionality of an ipod).
- AppStore
- iTunes (+Store) integration
- There's the brand thing
- Good design and functionality that appeals to the masses.
I agree that only the price doesnt sell a phone but infact it is a combination of many factors. I came to the US in 2006. I had a nokia 7710. At that time the US cell phones were very basic phones. I imagined that US being a very well developed country would have the state of the art mobiles. But boy was i wrong. The mobile phones offered in India were way advanced compared to the US at that time... thanks to nokia. Everyone in the US had the razr at that time and there was really no concept of smart phones in the general public. 90% of the users did not know that they could use the internet on thier mobile!

According to me the following are the success factors for the iphone in descending order:

1. Responsive touch screen.
2. Mobile internet - If the iphone did not force a data plan many of the americans would still not know that they could use the internet on the phone.
3. Apple - cool factor.
4. User interface.

At that time there was no app store so the app store did not really help in the iphone being popular initially.

Now if nokia would have released a nokia 5800 without the data plan at the same time for free with a 2 year contract... i think it would have been a bigger hit because it had all the features the iphone had and more but less intiutive and a cheaper look. Many would have brought it considering that it was free and did not need a data plan...

Since nokia never did that we really cannot know what would have happened. But if you see the success of the 5800 without being subsidised ..... you can only imagine how many units it would have sold.
 

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