Michael Johnston
April 30th, 2007, 02:57 PM
<img src="http://www.iphonealley.com/images/storyimages/dvorak_applehaslegs.jpg" alt="Dvorak" align="left" />Well-known Apple pessimist John C. Dvorak believes that Apple has it right with it's iPod line, but thinks an MP3 player phone isn't going to hit it big.
According to <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/apple-still-has-legs-phone-mp3/story.aspx?guid=%7B5E6B8128-3C5C-462D-9997-ED9D36C8B63B%7D" target="_blank">a MarketWatch article</a>, Dvorak believes that the iPhone will be detremental to Apple because consumers don't want MP3 player based phones. He believes that for such a device to be successful it would need to have at least 30 gigabytes of storage, the same amount today's full-sized iPod's carry. The reasoning is the demographic purchasing MP3 players are of a younger age and insist on carrying a vast array of musical genres.
<blockquote>"Kids today have no way to discover these new bands without having massive collections of music to trade and play for each other."
[...]
"The key is the massive-capacity MP3 player. Anything under 4 gigabytes is inadequate; many see 8 gigs as an absolute minimum. Apparently, young-adult music aficionados can load up thousands of songs from here and there in no time.
The player becomes a substitute for a radio station, and when these listeners come across a group or song they like, they can see the name on the display, follow up online and become fans and customers."
[...]
"The point here is that with this unusual sociology, the mobile-phone MP3 combo device just doesn't fit in well. They are too delicate and have capacity issues."
</blockquote>
As usual, Dvorak has some excellent points here that make a lot of sense. Of course, his style is to take a controversial topic and apply good logic fitting a certain perspective to draw attention to himself and as regular readers of his know, everything he says must be taken with a certain degree of skepticism. That having been said, his points seem valid in illustrating a demographic that will likely not be early iPhone adopters until the issue of inadequate size is solved. The problem is that Apple doesn't plan to market themselves to the high school/undergraduate market of people. Logic makes it obvious that these people don't have the money to spend on a $500 phone, and Apple is well aware of this. So until sizes are significantly increased, these customers will likely continue being Apple customers, just in respect to the iPod.
According to <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/apple-still-has-legs-phone-mp3/story.aspx?guid=%7B5E6B8128-3C5C-462D-9997-ED9D36C8B63B%7D" target="_blank">a MarketWatch article</a>, Dvorak believes that the iPhone will be detremental to Apple because consumers don't want MP3 player based phones. He believes that for such a device to be successful it would need to have at least 30 gigabytes of storage, the same amount today's full-sized iPod's carry. The reasoning is the demographic purchasing MP3 players are of a younger age and insist on carrying a vast array of musical genres.
<blockquote>"Kids today have no way to discover these new bands without having massive collections of music to trade and play for each other."
[...]
"The key is the massive-capacity MP3 player. Anything under 4 gigabytes is inadequate; many see 8 gigs as an absolute minimum. Apparently, young-adult music aficionados can load up thousands of songs from here and there in no time.
The player becomes a substitute for a radio station, and when these listeners come across a group or song they like, they can see the name on the display, follow up online and become fans and customers."
[...]
"The point here is that with this unusual sociology, the mobile-phone MP3 combo device just doesn't fit in well. They are too delicate and have capacity issues."
</blockquote>
As usual, Dvorak has some excellent points here that make a lot of sense. Of course, his style is to take a controversial topic and apply good logic fitting a certain perspective to draw attention to himself and as regular readers of his know, everything he says must be taken with a certain degree of skepticism. That having been said, his points seem valid in illustrating a demographic that will likely not be early iPhone adopters until the issue of inadequate size is solved. The problem is that Apple doesn't plan to market themselves to the high school/undergraduate market of people. Logic makes it obvious that these people don't have the money to spend on a $500 phone, and Apple is well aware of this. So until sizes are significantly increased, these customers will likely continue being Apple customers, just in respect to the iPod.