by Ankit Puri
The iPhone As A Fashion Statement!
2:09 PM in Apple, Applications, Guest, iPad, iPhone, iTouch, Mobile, Tech, Tools by Ankit Puri
iPhones started their lives as a fashion statement. They were the indispensable accessory to social lives. Then, thankfully, they became good working phones, with useful apps and valuable business tools. Hardcore Apple users bought them on principle, but a lot has changed at the global point of sale since then, and it’s worth having a look at how the market has evolved.
The iPhone in the marketplace:
Since the early category- killer days, the iPhone has encountered strong conceptual competition, notably from Google Android. Android works with iPhones, but it’s also open source, outside the proprietary ballpark dominated by Apple. That is a potential issue, because experience with all forms of personal device indicates that standardization is the preferred option.
If you remember the idiotic situations created by endless proprietary issues, you’ll see where Android is going:
- Media players that nobody really needed.
- Pointless letterbox widescreens which seemed to be a relic of the old movie days that nobody asked for (Who remembers 50s drive-ins, anyway?).
- Windows Vista and its various hardware requirements and other expensive hardware and software related misadventures.
Each of these things has eventually died the death it deserved. Even the standard Flash player is now under pressure from HTML5, and with any luck, a standard, play-anything player should eventually result. The problem, in market terms, is that any proprietary technology that restricts access to products restricts sales and use of that product. The iPhone can’t possibly be accused of deliberately restricting its usability for the public, but the nature of business is such that some people don’t want to be endlessly finding ways of making their products usable on different technologies.
In that sense, the iPhone is at risk of becoming a fashion victim, not a fashion statement. The market wants to click and go there, and doesn’t exactly listen in awed fascination to technical reasons why it can’t do that. It listens in extreme irritation, figuring out how much it’ll have to pay.
The public image of iPhone:
iPhones are popular, even despite the occasional seasonal blizzards of complaints and bugs. They’re no longer an icon, however, for people over about the age of 14. They’re a benchmark brand, not a status symbol. This is actually healthy for Apple’s market image, because they’re not seen as an overpriced waste of space, either, on that basis.
At the basal ” Supermarket POS” level, the iPhone is a credible market leader, with the Apple brand backing it up, not it supporting the Apple brand, as was once the case. This paradigm shift, while retaining market share, is possibly the true image of the iPhone. The iPhone generates market interest in the same sense top brand cars once did, with people looking for new features. The iPhone does have one regular trick up its sleeve, and that’s likely to be its saving grace- It evolves. The interest in iPhone technology is quite genuine, and Apple’s tendency to spring new features on the market does not get dull.
Fashionable? No. Permanent fixture in the marketplace? Yes. What you say? :/
There are many ways to interpret codded messages. The