Why the iPhone is a game-changer
by Andrew on 29/06/07 at 12:12 pm
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Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock recently, you’ll know that today is the day that the iPhone enters the world. People have been queuing outside stores for days to get their hands on one of the first. Wouldn’t it be nice if they did that for your company’s products!
As a South African you might be wondering what all the fuss is about. "So it looks cool and can play music, so what?". I think there are 2 reasons why the iPhone is a very big deal:
1) It has a decent web-browser. Most phones that I know can browse the web, but the display is really small, and the built-in browser doesn’t render sites the same way as desktop browsers do. Website developers have to create a second version of their online app or store in order to make it (semi) work on a phone, which means that most haven’t bothered yet (don’t try surfing YuppieChef on your phone!). The iPhone ships with the Safari browser, which is the identical browser that is found on the Mac, and most decent web-apps already work in Safari. To show that Apple are serious about this strategy, they recently made a Windows version of the Safari browser (download here) so that more developers can create and test their apps on it.
2) They have twisted AT&T’s arm to offer the iPhone on some pretty impressive packages:
It’s all well and good having a phone with a wonderful web-browser, but it won’t get very far if users are paying R2 per MB of download. On the cheapest iPhone cellphone package (under R500/month) you get "Unlimited Data", ie free internet access. That changes everything.
What does this mean for South Africans? Well, it’s yet another technology/telecoms service that we get to drool over, with little hope of getting it here for about 5 years. But on the positive side, if you’re a developer or a website owner you get to download the Safari browser and start writing amazing applications for an international audience. Get paid in foreign currency and enjoy the local beaches.
Andrew Smith is the pedantic systems guy behind Live Alchemy, a SA e-commerce company. Andrew writes for Ideate in an attempt to make the world a more efficient place. View more articles by Andrew.
