5 takeaways from Apple’s iPhone 4S event

“Today we’ll remind you of the uniqueness of this company as we announce innovations from our mobile OS, to applications, to services, to hardware, and more importantly the integration of all these into a powerful, simple, integrated experience.” – Apple CEO, Tim Cook

As there are a ton of good sites (HERE, HERE and HERE) that will exhaust the details of today’s iPhone 4S launch event, let me underline the five items that stood out most to me: 

1. Segmentation Logic: I blogged some time back about how Apple is better than almost any company out there in grokking the fundamental importance of segmenting the market based upon user outcomes, core jobs and underlying constraints.  In that light, you can look at iPhone segmentation as now covering the spectrum from network type (GSM, CDMA) and carrier (Sprint added to AT&T + Verizon in US) to functionality and price point. Here, I hearken back to Tim Cook’s comments at an Apple earnings call a few quarters back where the company announced that they would NOT leave pricing overhang (as they had in years past) for low-end competitors to outflank them. In that light, consider iPhone pricing that ranges from FREE (for iPhone 3GS) to $99 (for iPhone 4), $199 (for 8GB version of iPhone 4S), $299 (for 16GB version of iPhone 4S) and $399 (for 64GB version of iPhone 4S), respectively. Now, that's a frontal assault on the low-end Android phone, where arguably, their volume is greatest.
2. Apple didn’t call it iPhone 5 for a reason: You will hear many quibble that today’s event was disappointing or that Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs, and you can count on there being references to Apple's stock price dropping post announcement. But know this. Apple’s iPhone 4 form factor is HUGELY popular, and the overlay of iOS 5 and iCloud are major enhancements, so calling this device iPhone 4S is a measure of brand strength. Apple doesn't want users to turn the page to the NEXT phone when the current model is so powerful and popular. As to stock movement, that’s a simple case of buy on the rumor, sell on the news. If you track Apple stock immediately surrounding these events, that’s a simple correlate replicated over the years.
3. iPhone 4S camera is arguably the biggest deal: It’s almost pedestrian to point to a mobile camera as the biggest selling point of a mobile phone, but Apple’s camera in iPhone 4 was already starting to subsume the primacy of point-and-click cameras, something which Tim Cook pointed out when noting that iPhone 4 is the most popular camera for posting on Flickr. Hence, a materially better camera experience starts to lock down (for Apple) photography as a core job of these devices. Just look at the popularity of Instagram, with 10M users, and 25 photos + 90 likes processed every second, for proof of this point.
4. Do we Siri-ously want to talk to our phones? While the consensus was that the demo for Siri, Apple’s new voice-based intelligent assistant system, showcased Apple’s ability to take novel concepts and actually make them work, color me skeptical. This feels a bit like FaceTime. Cool in concept (like a dog walking on its hind legs), but debatable how central to the device's core utilization it will be in actual practice. That stated, I quipped on twitter that the porn and pop psychology app/service implications for Siri are staggering, so maybe there’s hope. (Siri listens to Mark ordering Chinese food, before chiming back in automated frustration with tonal snark, “Kung Pau Chicken, again?”
5. Building Bridges between the Virtual and the Real: Apple’s announcement of its new Cards service, whereby you can create, customize and mail beautiful printed cards right from your iPhone or iPod touch, may seem like one of those bullet points that is never to be heard from again. However, I suspect that in the same way iTunes trained users to 'suck at the teat' of micro-transactions (initially, songs), which fed nicely into all media and apps, Cards is the first attempt to train users to see iPhones and iPod touches as wallets and shopping carts for Real Goods (and services) that can be custom-ordered on the fly. That’s Apple. Start small and simple, get one complete logistical use case right, and then scale up and iterate.

A final side comment is that it’s funny how every time Apple has one of these events, all of the text-based services that cover the event always crash. YouTube can serve up 1B videos a day, Netflix can stream full movies, but a text-based event log can't stay up for the duration.

Yes, I know they are technically addressing different scaling issues, but it's funny nonetheless.

Related:

1. Apple's Segmentation Strategy (and the Folly of Conventional Wisdom)
2. What does Apple's iPhone 5 launch event in October say about the iPod's future?
3. Apple just became IBM of the Post-PC Era: Thoughts on Apple’s 'Q3 Earnings Call

Comments

[Honey Badger]

Agreed on all fronts.

[iphone apps developer]

Apple’s Iphone is one of the most sought-after gadgets in the world today. It has the most excellent features that can mesmerize anybody – which just proves that its popularity will not be waning out any time soon. Iphones, by default, are usually SIM-locked to just one network – which limits you to the services which that particular network offers and nothing else. Hence, you will not be able to avail of the better services that another network offers, or the more affordable fees that the competing network has. Fortunately, this dilemma can be easily solved by unlocking your Iphone. By doing this, you will have a wider choice of apps for your Iphone and you will be able to avail of better services that your current network provider might not be able to provide. Thanks a lot.

[Stephen Ackroyd]

So, the big deal here is CDMA+GSM on the iPhone 4S, but I do not understand the implications.

1) I see different issues in the GSM vs CDMA iPhone 4s. They have different firmware, and we have different issues in our apps running on them. The iPhone 4S solves this issue.

2) When I have CDMA + GSM iPhone, how does it work with carriers? Are there two sim cards? Can I sign up for AT+T and Verizon? Can I switch to Sprint?

[Mark Sigal]

@Stephen, this article speaks well to the topic:

Why the iPhone 5 Never Arrived (http://bit.ly/qlv2em), and it basically argues that the same Qualcomm chipset (MDM6600) can accommodate both CDMA+GSM, with the implications being that Apple either creates different firmware for each phone or has a universal build that toggles on for the appropriate carrier.

My guess is the former because I believe that the carriers prefer a separate sim card + firmware combo to hardware bound to their network.

That stated, it's unclear that 4S will actually support the ability to switch networks for the above reasons. If you parse the messaging on Apple's site about world phone, the way I read it is that you can buy a phone that will run on either CDMA or GSM but you can only roam on GSM.

[gadgettown]

Hence, you will not be able to avail of the better services that another network offers, or the more affordable fees that the competing network has.

[iphone 5 release date]

So, the big deal here is CDMA+GSM on the iPhone 4S, but I do not understand the implications.