HTC "Touch" Is Competition to Apple's iPhone?
Have you heard the hype about the new HTC Touch phone as being a possible Apple iPhone killer?No one understands.
The Touch will not even come close. It will fall into obscurity like all the other PDA phones out there.
Why?
Because it uses an expandable SD card for memory expansion.
Why does that matter?
Let me ask you: do YOU like buying memory cards for your phone? Do you like fumbling around with that little card?
Do you want to go out and purchase a bigger memory card right after you dropped hundreds of dollars on a phone that is supposed to be the Holy Grail of all phones?
No, I'm sure you'd rather do what Apple is suggesting: buy an iPhone and be done with it!
No fooling around with delicate little cards. No shopping around online or at various malls in order to find the cheapest price on a 4Gb card. Seamlessness. Simplicity. Not complications.
The sooner manufacturers figure out that iPhone is outselling their own "copy-cats" because IT IS A HARD-DRIVE PHONE, the better.
Why are iPods selling better than the mp3 players that were around before iPod? Because they're hard drives.
Why will iPhones sell better than mp3 player phones? Because they're hard drives. (OK, so they're NOT really hard drive phones...YET. As Stewie pointed out, right now iPhones just use flash memory)
It's clear to me. It's unclear to manufacturers and wireless providers.
I have a message to all the manufacturers & providers: when you finally figure out that what I'm saying is right, you can send me checks for what my advice is worth!
posted by Shawn at 10:24 AM
2 Comments:
I have to disagree.
If the main difference between the two phones is whether or not the memory is on a card or built in, the general public will prefer it on a card.
Practically speaking the iPhone's built in flash (NOT a harddrive like you mention) may be better, but when shopping around many people prefer memory cards.
Why?
1. The phone is cheaper to buy initially.
2. They feel they can upgrade the card whenever they like
3. They can swap cards
Obviously the differences between the iPhone and iPhone-wannabes is much greater than the type of memory used, so this blog entry and post is basically useless.
Stewie,
You say "the general public will prefer it on a card".
How can the general public prefer to have something they don't have a choice between yet?
They can't prefer a flash/hard drive phone over a SD card phone if they've never been given that choice.
Show me the focus group results of consumers that said they prefer memory cards; I'd love to see it. :)
I think you'll find people only buy memory cards for phones because they HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE. Are we to assume that because card sales are good it means that people LOVE them?
I take the microSD card out of my LG8600, put it in the fake SD card adapter, put that in the USB adapter, put that in the computer.... Boy that was fun.... Oops! Lose/break the microSD card, ask friends if they have an extra, look online, check eBay, shop around at stores, get it shipped, wait 11 days, whoops! It doesn't work, send it back, tell them to forget about it, go shop around again, finally find a new one. More fun.
About your point #1, "The phone is cheaper to buy initially", I'd like to apply that to just normal mp3 players for a second. If a shopper is offered a $89 mp3 player with 64megs of space, yet has an SD card slot for which they can go buy a $100 to $200 card, would you say they traditionally flock to such an offering? Or does Apple's 80% of the market (or whatever) tell us something different?
Point #2: "A person can upgrade whenever they like". See my previous comment. Using the mp3 player example again, I don't see too many people buying newer, bigger SD cards. I see the 10GB iPod user upgrading to the 60 or 80GB iPod.
Point #3: "They can swap cards". Well, I just don't understand what you mean here. Swap with who?
Your last point about the memory size of media phones not being the real issue at hand ignores the whole point of merging phones with mp3 players.
1) People carry two devices now.
2) People love iPods.
3) iPods became popular because they were the first to offer huge capacity (i.e. first-to-market = top of the mind awareness)
4) People want an iPod phone
5) Therefore, if another manufacturer were to offer the same or similar device, they will be able to compete with Apple.
6) If a manufacturer came out with a 20GB or 60GB or 80GB mp3 phone, they would eat away at Apple's 1% mobile phone market forecast for 2007. (if you ask me, Apple's 4 & 8GB offering is a little silly, and opens them up to the competition I'm encouraging)
Again, regarding your last point, do you really believe that phones are so different today that consumers will differentiate between a Touch & iPod based on software? Ergonomics? Taste? :)
To suggest that a significant number of consumers are going to buy a "Touch" or any other SD-card-slot-phone over an iPhone...based on much more than memory size, simply ignores the above 6 axioms.
(Sorry for not specifying that the memory on the iPhone and a lot of mp3 players is flash only. I'm only assuming that as manufacturers get smarter, they will offer 60GB hard drive phones in the future. But for now, yes, flash is what I should have said.)
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