Matthew Lynn, Bloomberg, “Apple iPhone Will Fail in a Late, Defensive Move,” January 15th, 2007:

The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant.

[snip]

There are three reasons that Apple is unlikely to make much of an impact on this market — and why it is too early to start dumping your Nokia shares.

First, Apple is late to this party. The company didn’t invent the personal computer or MP3 player, but it was among the pioneers of both products. Yet there is no shortage of phones out there. There are already big companies that dominate the space, all of whom will defend their turf. That means Apple will have to fight hard for every sale.

Next, the mobile-phone industry depends on cooperation with the big networks. Phones — the high-end ones in particular –are usually sold with a network contract. The provider subsidizes the handset in the U.K. and hopes to recoup its money with ridiculously expensive charges for calls and data. Yet Apple has never been good at working with other companies. If it knew how to do that, it would be Microsoft Corp.

On top of that, its rivals will be pulling out all the stops to prevent the networks offering iPhones. Sure, a big operator such as Vodafone Group Plc would like an exclusive deal to sell the iPhone in, say, the U.K. market. Against that, how much does it want to annoy Nokia — and what kind of incentives will Nokia be offering not to go with the Apple product? There will be lots of tough conversations between companies that know each other well. Apple will find it hard to win those negotiations.

Lastly, the iPhone is a defensive product. It is mainly designed to protect the iPod, which is coming under attack from mobile manufacturers adding music players to their handsets. Yet defensive products don’t usually work — consumers are interested in new things, not reheated versions of old things. Likewise, who is it pitched at? The price and the e-mail features make it look like a business product. But Apple is a consumer company. Will your accounts department stump up for a fancy new handset just so you can listen to Eminem on your way to a business meeting?

[snip]

Apple will sell a few to its fans, but the iPhone won’t make a long-term mark on the industry.

Harry says: McCracken’s Fourth Law of Apple Predictions states that the more definitive a dismissal of an Apple product is, the more likely that it’ll turn out to be ludicrously wrong. While Lynn’s piece is dated almost a week after the iPhone was announced, it almost reads like it was written beforehand–I don’t see how anyone who was paying attention could conclude that the phone was “a defensive product” that was “mainly designed to protect the iPod.”

Richard Sprague, a Microsoft employee and former Apple evangelist, in “Steve Jobs Says Java is History,” January 18th, 2007 and “More on Why iPhone Will Fail,” January 26th, 2007:

I can’t believe the hype being given to iPhone.  Even some of my blindly-loyal pro-Microsoft friends and colleagues talk like it’s a real innovation and will “redefine the market” or “usher in a new age”.

What!?!?  Without even mentioning that the same functionality has been available on PocketPC, Palm, Nokia, and Blackberry for years, I just have to wonder who will want one of these things (other than the religious faithful).  People need this to be a phone, first and foremost. But with 5 hours of battery life?  No keypad?  (you try typing a phone number on that screen, no matter how wonderful it is — you will want a keypad).  And for all that whiz-bang Internet access, you absolutely need the phone to work, immediately, every single time.  Will it do that?

So please mark this post and come back in two years to see the results of my prediction:  I predict they will not sell anywhere near the 10M Jobs predicts for 2008.  Okay, it’s possible there are enough Apple religious people to buy a lot of them at first, but even the most diehard Mac fans who buy one of these will secretly carry two phones.  One to prove how loyal and “cool” they are, and the other to actually make and receive calls.

[snip]

Here are more reasons I am not impressed by their phone, and why I’m surprised so many otherwise intelligent people think this is a watershed for the industry.

1. It’s closed to outside apps.  It’s a “feature phone”, not a smart phone.  You are at Apple’s mercy to make a good experience.   Sure, it’s nice that Apple can control the entire experience, but that only gets you so far.  How popular would iPod be if you could only play songs downloaded from iTunes?
2. No Keyboard!?!  I don’t care how wonderful the on-screen experience is, you will demand a keyboard within a day of using it.  Lesley points me to all this research on haptic interfaces that demonstrates why we don’t like to write on glass.
3. No speech?!?  I admit that only 20% of people use speech features on their existing smart phones, but that’s because so few phones have Voice Command.  I don’t know how people make phone calls without high-accuracy voice dialing. I use it every single day.
4. Is it a good phone?  Latency is hard to get right in a device like this, and by being essentially a media device, iPhone is trying to do a lot. If you’re watching a movie and your doctor calls, it is unacceptable for the phone to take its time answering.  Or if a bad guy starts your building on fire, you need to call 911 without the phone complaining that you are in the middle of a precious download.

Microsoft’s not perfect; we don’t have the ultimate phone either, but I’ll take Windows Mobile any day over the iPhone and I bet serious users will agree.

Harry says: Sprague underestimated the appeal of the iPhone’s interface and Apple’s ability to make a touchscreen device into a decent phone. And I’m not sure why he brings up latency as a reason he’s unimpressed when he hasn’t tried the phone yet. He’s chimed in about the iPad on Twitter, and he’s not impressed by it, either:

A few overall thoughts about these predictions:

• They failed to figure out that the iPhone was a fungible platform. It’s dangerous to predict that a pricey phone that doesn’t support third-party apps is destined to tank–its manufacturer just might cut the cost and open it up to developers.
• They didn’t get that the phone’s browser was a breakthrough. For many people, it, not the phone, turned out to be the gizmo’s primary application.
• They didn’t acknowledge how far ahead the iPhone’s software was, and how long it might take for other companies to catch up. Two and a half years later, the iPhone still has a lead in multiple respects.
• They came to conclusions about the phone’s usability based on insufficient evidence. In January of 2007, almost nobody who didn’t work for Apple or one of its partners had touched an iPhone, with the exception of a handful of journalists. I don’t think any of these writers were among the lucky few.

All of which leads me to one conclusion about the current spate of iPad predictions: The best ones aren’t the ones that read like they were written by someone who belonged to the debate club in high school. The best ones are the ones that cheerfully acknowledge that there’s a lot we don’t know yet; that the iPad could look a lot different in a year than it does today; and that expressing opinions about a product you haven’t tried is inherently dangerous.

That said, if you’ve got predictions about the iPad–or thoughts about iPad predictions in general–I won’t try to discourage you from expressing them in the comments…

More Apple history on Technologizer:

A Brief History of Those Apple Event Invites

Apple Patentmania: 31 Years of Big Ideas

The Patents of Steve Jobs

Apple Rumors: The Early Years

Inside the Macintosh Portable

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