Connections

  Connect Application for iPhone 
  Originally uploaded by GlennFleishman

Thursday's Telegraph headline about Apple contrasts with their Wednesday view of the iPhone. If we look a the facts behind the hype then Apples is doing well and the iPhone is following the trajectory of iPod.

iPods push Apple to record

Apple posted record quarterly profits last night on strong sales of its iPod music players and Macintosh computers, but the stock remained volatile in after hours trading as analysts noted the much vaunted iPhone got off to a slow start. 

is one headline and the other is

Apple shares slide on iPhone fears

Apple shares tumbled more than 6pc yesterday after AT&T, its iPhone network provider in the US, revealed it had sold fewer iPhones than many analysts predicted.

The US phone network said at its second quarter results yesterday that 146,000 customers signed iPhone contracts within the first two days of being launched. As the iPhone was rolled out across the US on June 29, analysts had reckoned that as many as 200,000 were sold in the first day.

That figure quickly ballooned, with one analyst, David Bailey at Goldman Sachs, doubling his initial prediction of 350,000, to a sales estimate of 700,000 iPhones within the first weekend.

but sales are in-line with Apple's forecast of 1million in the first quarter.

The "experts" have knocked shortcomings of iPod and its non-3G network, but we must remember Bill Buxton's comments on the 4 iterations to success of the iPod offering. It took 3 years for the iPod to be an overnight success so we'll see how many it takes iPhone.... there is only so much pre-launch research we can do to get things "right" bu it is ultimately the customers/consumers/users who decide where our offer fits in their lives, and the sooner we can start learning that the better it will be. As Jeff Bezos put it:

“I'm often encouraging people to go faster, even if it means a worse initial product. I want us to start learning. The cost of trying to avoid mistakes is huge in terms of speed.”

So it won't be the analysts or Apple who directly determine the fate of the iPhone but the people who use the product and service that they construct from the offerings of all the complementors in the growing iPhone ecosystem. It is how the iPhone in totality (what it represents) invites us to play with and determine how well it satisfies aspects of our needs (articulated or more especially unarticulated) in the three spheres- physiological, social and personal growth- that will determine its spread into mainstream society. As Michael Schrage puts it in Persuasion

"In the first and final analysis, design is about effecting change in people’s choices and behaviour. People choose to use or enjoy a particular design. People change, modify or adapt their behaviour in order to engage new features, new functionality and new experiences. In other words, they are persuaded—or they persuade themselves—that the design is worth their time, effort, money and/or resources."

iAutoDock: It's a car radio with a slot (like the one an 8-track tape goes into) for your ipod nano.

Uploaded by jordanfischer . Used with thanks under CC.