I was amongst the early users to pick up an iPhone duly & start using it.

Having given up E90 due to it’s dud speakerphone…. I was convinced by Anjan Ghosh of TV18 whom I refer to as Tech Guru(for the study he manages to do on any thing electronic) that “iPhone is all about style and not about ease of use. Typing text is easy once you get habitual, but since this is a touch panel handset and we use our fingers instead of stylus, typing long test messages or mails is not that fancy. And when you compare ease of typing on iPhone with Blackberry, black berry is better. iPhone is all about style, sleek looks of the handset, the flipping of pictures using your fingers, the zooming in and out function while viewing pictures or websites and not to forget that the front panel or display is scratch resistant And don’t forget the audio quality “ apple’s iPod always had an upper hand over any other music player and iPhone anyways has all the functionality of an iPod too !! though it has a 2megapixel camera, the quality of pictures shot are amazing. One can easily get deceived by thinking it has been shot using a 3.2 or 5 megapixel cam !! He also warned me : The worst thing with iPhone are : you cannot forward SMS, or send SMS to multiple recipients. You cannot send or receive MMS. The Blue tooth feature of this handset supports only hands-free devices and nothing else. Which means you cannot pair your phone with any Bluetooth enabled handset or laptop to send or receive songs, pictures, vide os, etc.”

At that point of time my take was:

1 Personally being reasonably good at multi tasking I have always felt the Qwerty key board is a waste of time.
2 In some ways I found Pearl better whilst typing; though the one Nokia phone with stylus was great since it accepted handwriting recognition; but found iPhone OK after practice.
3 Not too great a photographer so was ok with 2.0 MP
4 Memory……16gb was great for a hoarder like me.
5 SMS - a real drag, particularly when you are used to the sony; nokia blue tooth with laptop. Also a SMS champ like me has a problem-though smsd installed helps to an extent, but multiple have to be scrolled thru. At least in pearl some 20 could be created. BUT guess when iPhone is created for India they will take care of this.

NOW after using it for a pretty long time……..I would suggest to all of you who intend buying the 3G iPhone,

Steve & Co have NOT customized it to INDIA, because they believe….. US consumers are the most savvy…unfortunately in this case they are not.

Its good for US market (who have no idea what mobile freedom/choice is) which is practically in the stone age compared to asian/european markets. When they want to buy a phone, they have to go to network operator and buy only those phones that are available on that network; stick to that company till their contract expires. You want to change carriers? Not before paying damages, & buying another phone on the other network again.

Apple has managed to create a hype amongst the millions sold….But has it really totalled the nos of pieces sold in the USA & those sold in the grey market till date? Has it been a success in Europe, if so surprisingly Apple never talks of its sales there.

In India it is being clubbed with Airtel & Vodafone which may be a good thing, BUT what about the grey market that is like a parallel economy for the mobile phones in India…..Who is going to control that?

For the iPhone

1 Cannot do group sms; forwards unless you spend EXTRA on smsd software.
2 No MMS
3 Cannot share any files via blue tooth
4 Cannot use as a wireless modem. You shall pay high data charges to activate internet on it, but cannot connect it to your PC & browse when at home or travelling.
5 Camera - Just OK; most of the time photos look like a VGA camera.
6 No video recording
7 No flash
8 No Physical keyboard - After constant usage, for me this alone is a deal breaker…..touch keyboard as good as it sounds & looks…..once you use it constantly for business, then you realize the importance of having a hard keypad.
9 No 3G network in India still so technically for India 2.0 is no better than its first version.
10 No removable battery, which means you cannot change battery. Have to sent it to apple outlet……jeez how many of them are there actually in India…& this is not an iPod, it’s a bloody phone, you cannot live without phone for 2-3 days whilst battery is being inserted.
11 Can’t use as external storage device….16gb of utter waste…want to share, songs, movies etc…sorry you cannot connect your “3G 2.0 Apple 16GB phone” with your friend and share it. APPLE solution”Buy music & movies from iTunes Store”
12 No FM Radio……imagine the radio stations who have spent a bomb getting listeners, tearing their
hair out in fury.
13 Cannot use mp3 etc as ring tones.
14 Completely tied to iTunes…..connect to your friend’s/spouse’s iTunes & you risk erasing everything on your phone.
15 3rd part soft wares…you have to buy them from iTunes store only.

NOW the INDIA Market…..

We in India have so much freedom. We go to handset shops & buy which ever phone we like. Then go to carriers.. checkout the plans & buy SIM. Don’t like the plan or rival carrier came up with a better plan???? EASY . just remove & replace the SIM. Now how are Airtel & Vodafone proposing to control this?

On the phone, We Indians are used to these features. Most of our phones already have these features. & we cannot do with out them…. i mean can you imagine paying so much for a phone with which you cannot transfer files via blue tooth. what age is this …STONE AGE???

My take on this…..

Steve Jobs will finally realize what the India Market is. This shall redefine his business strategy on phone over the next 6-9 months.

This will spawn a generation of low level hackers in India who shall become entrepreneurs for 3rd party software, battery, chargers so on & forth.

The Business phone user shall try out the novelty value & soon give it up.

AND I SAY WELCOME NOKIA E66

A man eats two eggs each morning for breakfast. When he goes to the
grocery store he pays Rs. 6 a dozen. Since a dozen eggs won’t last a
week he normally buys two dozens at a time. One day while buying eggs he
notices that the price has risen to Rs. 7. The next time he buys
groceries, eggs are Rs. 7.5 a dozen.

When asked to explain the price of eggs the store owner says, “The price
has gone up and I have to raise my price accordingly”. This store buys 100
dozen eggs a day. He checked around for a better price and all the
distributors have raised their prices. The distributors have begun to buy
from the huge egg farms. The small egg farms have been driven out of
business. The huge egg farms sell 100,000 dozen eggs a day to
distributors. With no competition, they can set the price as they see fit.
The distributors then have to raise their prices to t he grocery stores.
And on and on and on.

Read the rest of this entry »

Devangshu heads Third Eyesight (website:http://thirdeyesight.in), a consulting firm focussed on retail and consumer products. Previously, he has held senior management positions in retail and management consulting organisations, and also co-founded a fashion sourcing company. Read the rest of this entry »

An email debate on the above initiated by Harris - Managing Director of Witco the chain of luggage speciality stores down south Read the rest of this entry »

A valid question, particularly in the current context of Retail Boom, Value Addition the new specialty stores provide etc. etc. Read the rest of this entry »

Example II

Having shifted to Mumbai & the new MNC expected me to report for the presentation in a JACKET???? Read the rest of this entry »

Ventured out to party yesterday night! Yup; I know it was a Monday night. Read the rest of this entry »