John Gruber (Daringfireball.net) writes about iPhone vs. Blackberry and says:
RIM doesn’t really have any lock-in other than user habits. The BlackBerry gimmick is that it works with the email system your company bought from Microsoft.
Which is not really true. I don't know what % of RIM's revenues come from their server products, but I do know the Blackberry -> Exchange integration is more complicated that just the user buying their own phone and hooking it up themselves.
The blackberry solution offers an "internet free" solution. Your exchange servers don't need to talk to the internet, they live buried in your firewall, passing messages to RIM's network, that sends them via the proper mobile carrier. That might not be the perfect description, but point is, there's network connections, server products, and support costs. I don't think the iPhone will be a drop-in replacement in large companies. Enterprises have built-in lock in. With the blackberry solution, the IT department is in charge of provisioning all the phones, and if I don't get the blessed, provisioned phone from them I can't even have a blackberry.
It remains to be seen exactly what the iPhone's solution is going to take to deploy. Or whether it will without a server be able to offer all the ticky-tacky big-brother things that enterprises love (disabling the web browser, or the camera, or the iPod, keeping logs on all calls, etc.). We'll know more once it's released.
Fortune thinks ATT wants to pick up $200 of your iPhone.
This could mean big, big things for Apple if it's true. I think this strategy makes the 10 million phones by the end of the year goal look like a drop in the bucket. Apple's not in the habit of selling anything at a loss though, but that's okay here since it's ATT that would pick up the tab.
The question is, why would they? And why wouldn't they at launch? Was it so calculated that ATT knew demand would drive 5-6 million phone sales that they could rake in bucks for, in return for taking the risk on the iPhone, and then after a year and version 2.0 they'd announce the subsidy, to go deeper into the market?
Brilliant strategy if true. For one it's obvious; it's just pricing things like the market will bear. Second, this makes the iPhone like an iPod; it puts it into kids' price ranges. Can you say "ubiquitous"? I knew you could.
So at the expense of some cash, ATT gets to own the market for what could be an iPhone-like domination of the phone market for the next 5-10 years. Bold.
For the most part I think applications obeying the "launch fast/quit fast" protocol implied by the lack of background tasks will do just fine. There's plenty you can do.
I can think of one major stumbling block though, and that's tasks that you can't just quit and suspend. Like, say uploading a file. Unlike mail on the phone, where you can send a mail, lock the phone, and hear the satisfying swoosh that lets you know your mail was delivered, if you lock, get a call, or accidentally hit home, good bye file upload. I can see ways to handle it sort of with UI, but noting jumps out as being as good as Mail's solution.
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