Welcome to the Future

When the first iPhone was announced, I publicly stated that I would wait for version 2 before purchasing. It took about 30 seconds of playing with version 1 before changing my mind. Holding the slim, elegant device in my hands, I felt like I was experiencing radio for the first time. I didn’t want to be the person who waited for FM. I wanted it now, and I marched down to the Apple store at lunch, plunking down my $600 with a smile.

Yesterday, Apple announced a new, faster iPhone yesterday at a $199 price point, something I believe will herald the golden age of the mobile internets.

Yes, smart phones existed before Apple, but so did MP3 players before the iPod, and we all know how that worked out. Consider this: how MANY iPods does your household own?

In Q1 of this year, the iPhone represented 19.2% of smart phone sales, and that was at the $400 price point and sans Exchange support (plus a few supply issues). This new release adds GPS, custom (location aware) apps and games, a new “push” content feature (hence the Exchange mail and calendar support), and a whole lot more.

Mike Davidson, former ESPN.com and MSNBC.com designer, and founder of Newsvine.com, has some commentary I feel is pretty right on, and the LA Times has a great writeup of the event for more info.

At the risk of sounding like a fanboy of the highest order, how on earth could the average customer justify purchasing any other mobile device at this point? If you can still get a free phone somewhere and that suits you, then great. But for the person thinking of spending between $99 and $799 on a Nokia, Motorola, Palm, or Sony, how can you even think about those alternatives given where the iPhone just went? The quality/feature/usability gap is so large that even a hatred for AT&T can’t keep people away now.