Why the iPhone is doomed

The hoopla about the Apple iPhone App Store has been well discussed.  I find it hard to imagine investing the time and effort in writing an iPhone application and then *maybe* getting it accepted into the App Store (after some indeterminate wait period) and then hoping that Apple does not change their mind later (stranding my customers).  But even more of a problem is the broken nature of the platform itself:  come on, single tasking?  So there’s no way to have some useful agent running in the background doing interesting things?  Oh, wait, it might be possible if Apple does it…  then it would be part of the platform.  But then it’s Apple controlled, owned, and operated… and they get the revenue and the value of the data the application generates.   But clearly there are a lot of people that are OK with the limitations of single tasking so far – they keep buying the darn things after all.

The real reason that the iPhone is doomed is that it’s just simply too closed.  Apple changed the game with the iPhone:  they moved the walled garden from the exclusive domain of the carriers to the exclusive domain of Apple.  They control everything about the platform – look and feel, what APIs are open, what you can and cannot do with the phone.  It’s just like it was a few years ago when you *had* to play the carriers silly games to get a mobile app approved, only now it’s Apple not the carriers.  The only thing that made this radical change in garden ownership possible was that it was done by a company that defines cool and hip… and (and this is a BIG and) they did it at the exact right time where they could literally enable the mobile web.   The mobile web was pathetic before the iPhone.  I’ve used a number of mobile phones that had a data package – and was an early adopter of the Nokia N800/810 MID devices tethering through my phone.  But the average consumer was left out until Apple made the market right for a huge number of consumers.   The iPhone made it possible for literally *anyone* to use the web no matter where they were (within coverage).  The web became more open and accessible and Apple reaped billions.  Good for them.  But the Internet is more than the web, and the world of mobile applications is far more interesting.

Today’s ‘smart phones’ are still primarily phones and oh, they are handheld computers too.    In the case of the iPhone that’s sort of true.  It’s a handheld computer that you can do one thing at a time with.   The Nexus One that I am testing has better screen resolution than an iPhone 3GS and has more memory and a more powerful CPU.  But as an Android phone it  can do more than an iPhone can do since it’s a real multi-tasking system.   The future of mobile applications is not about a human doing one thing at a time.   It’s about machines doing things for us as we are mobile.   Most of these applications have not even been envisioned yet but I have glimmers of some ideas.   I see a time soon when your ‘phone’ will detect (and be detected) in a variety of contexts – and software will act on your behalf without you having to do anything.  An easy to imagine use case is checking in at a restaurant where you have reservations.  Your phone knows where you are, and it can know that you have reservations someplace (especially if you booked them through Open Table or similar.  Your phone can easily send a message when you arrive and give you a little buzz that you are acknowledged.  In fact, the system can buzz you again when your table is ready.  This app is not possible (to my understanding) on an iPhone.  You’d have to manually start the app to have it do the work.  We could sit and drink a few glasses of wine and come up with a dozen other similar ideas.    You can be sure that there’s a bunch of folks out there right now building these apps for Android right now – and the applications will be far more exciting than my silly reservation check in example.

The brain drain of innovative independent developers started last year as folks started abandoning the Apple platform.  The rate of increase in Android applications is insane (10,000 in a few months, and rising fast).  Now that AT&T will have Android phones (joining Verizon’s Droid) subsidized phones will broaden the user community.   Of course, I think that the future will see all phones being unlocked – after all, can you imagine that you cannot buy a computer unless you lock in with an ISP for years?  Insane!).   But more importantly, the application ecosystem is not closed – anyone can make and sell applications and you don’t risk a company like Apple slamming the door in your face.   The same thing that doomed the telco efforts to keep a walled garden will doom the iPhone (in it’s current form).  Apple broke the walls with a device that opened the mobile web.  Android will break the Apple walls by opening the mobile Internet – literally a whole new way of computing.  Real-time mobile applications will be more cool (and more useful) than just the mobile web.  The rate of innovation in the Apple closed walled garden will not be able to match the rate of innovation on the open mobile Internet – which is what the Android devices will be operating on.  Voice applications will all be Voice over IP – they are all packet data anyway – and there won’t be silly minutes plans anymore – just different data plans.  Your ‘phone’ is just a computer that you will take with you everywhere, and the applications that run on it will be amazing.  It’s a whole new market and open markets always generate innovation.   I’m looking forward to helping to make that reality happen sooner.

What do you think?  I’m sure the Apple lovers out there will have something fun to contribute.  What have I gotten wrong?  How do you think it will play out?  Comments welcome.

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