Thomas: I’ve a confession to make, I love my Apple stuff. It’s an aesthetically pleasing yet expensive habit, but with the help of Google, HTC, OpenMoko and maybe Microsoft I think I’m pulling through it. (Yeah, yeah, I know I’m typing this up on a late 08 MBP! ). I’m the kind of guy that always bought phones on tech rather than brand. From the early Nokia’s with slidey keypads to my 3G Walkman phone, via my first smartphone (a Sendo X running Symbian OS) I’ve always looked for something with the highest numbers on the spec sheet. Bigger screens, faster data transfer and more memory was always the aim of the game. The iPhone changed that for me, it was substantially more expensive than anything I’d had before and provided comparably of fewer features. I’m not going to review the iPhone here, suffice to say I don’t regret the purchase one bit.
So Martin, I know your take on mobile phone ownership is a bit different to mine! What sort of phone am I going to be buying next?
Martin: I don’t tend to use my phone that much so I have always tended towards a phone that just lets me phone people and send text messages. Since the iPhone made its messianic descent to earth I have started to consider phones that can do more. At the moment I’d still rather have an iPod touch and a simple phone than an iPhone. Do you reckon that there may be an iPhone Nano aimed at people like me? What will make the Nano a Nano without crippling all the iPhone features? (we’ll ignore other makes of phone until later)
Thomas: Well if Apple follow the same track as with the iPod we might not see a Nano phone for 2-3 years. I’ve a feeling we’ll see something a bit sooner than that, I predict we’ll get a further revision of the iPhone in 2009 and an iPhone nano will reveal itself in 2010.
The multi-touch surface is great and make the user interface what it is, it’s the one thing Apple has that other manufacturers just don’t seem to be able to compete with. However making it useable on a surface much smaller than what they have now would be difficult. I think any iPhone nano would have a similar feature set to the existing iPhone, (3G, flash memory, GPS) but a different UI, maybe controlled by a click wheel and more use of the accelerometers.
Is there a space in the already crowded mobile phone market for an iPhone nano?
Martin: Thats an interesting one. If you take away the full size screen or any of the functionality then it stops being an iPhone. Perhaps as the models evolve then some space will be opened beneath the iPhone for an iPhone nano that retains all of the features that we know today but none of the new ones that will undoubtedly be added this summer (assuming they stick to the one year development cycle). I like the click wheel idea, that would keep it in line with the iPod Nano as well. The iPod Nano is the perfect shape for a phone too.
What about other manufacturers? Do you think that RIM, Nokia et al have recovered form iPhone shock and have some competition waiting or will phones go the way of the iPod?
Thomas: Yeah, the latest Nano would make a great phone! The iPhone caused some big ripples in the market but only really at the top end. RIM, Nokia and HTC have all made massive improvments to their top end smart phone lines that I really doubt we would have seen without the iPhone. I think Apple has proven that for the most part people want a phone as fasion accessory they can use to call people with. They may not top the features list or the big megapixel table but they’ve made a phone that anyone can pick up and work out how to use 99% of the features within minutes. The latest models from HTC steal heavily from the iPhone interface but insist on dropping back to an ugly Windows gui for some of the features.
Apple are never going to own the whole game, I know to many people who refuse to buy Apple just because it’s Apple. With the right models they will get an easy 50% though, just like they did with the iPod.
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