A Tokyo shopper brandishes his iPhone 4 after product launch in June 2010. Photo: Toru Yamanaka/AFP/Getty ImagesA growing number of tech experts predicting iPhone is in danger of losing its "smart phone wars" for an upstart operating system from Google, in a dramatic reversal of fortune for one of the world's coolest high-tech products.
For many people is the iPhone still the last word in digital chic. Its sleek style and touch-screen changed the way many used their mobile phones.
Next month, Apple's device will be launched on a different network, phone in the United States, make it available to millions more customers. The news has created a huge buzz, and some have whispered that Apple may one day become the first billion-dollar company in the world. This should be a great time for angry Apple chief executive Steve Jobs. Or it would be if not for the growing commercial clout of Google's Android.
"Too late for the iPhone," read a headline last week in a daily Beast column of tech author Dan Lyons. Many experts agreed. "Android has taken over from what I can see," said Joe Sullivan, founder of site Journerdism who studies mobile technology industry. Some commercial statistics bear. Android mobiles now outselling iPhones in the United States. Latest figures from the United States shows the Android and iPhone neck and neck in market share – but with 40.8% of the new smart phone sales in six months to November will Android and 26.9% to iPhones.
Critics say that the iPhone launch on Verizon network is too late, and that it too long relied on AT&T patchy service. That has allowed Android to take off with such speed that it has left a time cutting-edge iPhone in its wake. "It was almost comical how much people said they hated AT&T," said Rob Jackson, editor of Phandroid, a tech site that tracks Android market.
But the greater problem lies with the real differences between iPhones and Android. While the iPhone is the whole package of network technology and phone, Android is an operating system, many different phone models can use. It allows users of an enormous number of choices Androids about how complex (or not) they want their phone be. IPhone users are in the meantime, mainly bound to what Apple only allows them to do and buy.
"Personally, I prefer Android. I would like to change things around my need. But if I recommend my mother had a phone, I would recommend an iPhone, "says Sullivan. Lyon was in his article for the daily beast even more concise about the limitations of the iPhone. ' [It] is a bit like the situation you had with Henry Ford Model T, where you could have any color you wanted as long as it was black, ' wrote Lyon.
The IPhone has always had critics. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, took last year to its own Facebook page to slamming the unit in order to have a bad battery and release the phone call. "I got four Chargers so I can keep it charged everywhere I go and a landline, so I can actually make phone calls," he posted.
But not all depreciate Apple. Verizon will open iPhone to 100 million new customers in the United States. There is also no doubt the excitement, that many people get from products, created by Apple. "It arguably has the strongest brand in tech. it is cool. It stands for more than just a phone. It is a fashion statement. It is a lifestyle, "said Jackson.
It is important. The market is for one of the great success of the development of smart phone, phone call on the devices have been supplanted by email, instant messaging and chat. A huge business ecology "apps" are also grown up allows smart phones do anything from checking the weather to pick out a local restaurant. In this new world of mobile communications believe many, it would be foolish to make solid predictions. "So much can change again in five years, that I not only know what will happen," said Jackson.
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