This. Is. iPhone JEOPARDY!... Judges Round!
Way back on March 14 we covered some of the bold, bodacious pontifications the CEOh-no's of Microsoft, RIM, and Palm had made about the iPhone. Quick-on-the-buzzer as always, it's time once again to go back to our judges and see how they did!
"Why We're Not Worried about the iPhone" for 100
"We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in."
Daily Double-Talk
"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance."
Final Jeopardy!
"Talk -- all I'm [hearing] is talk about [the iPhone's chances in Enterprise]. I think it's important that we put this thing in perspective." [...] "Apple's design-centric approach [will] ultimately limit its appeal by sacrificing needed enterprise functionality. I think over-focus on one blinds you to the value of the other." [...] "Apple's approach produced devices that inevitably sacrificed advanced features for aesthetics."
And to top it all off:
THERE’S a reason that R.I.M. is averse to the iPhone’s glass pad. “I couldn’t type on it and I still can’t type on it, and a lot of my friends can’t type on it,” says Mike Lazaridis, R.I.M.’s co-chief executive and technological visionary. “It’s hard to type on a piece of glass.”
Judges?
10 Million iPhones sold in 2008, almost 7 million in Q4 alone. More units of a single SKU moved than all RIM SKUs combined, and more than (we think!) WinMob licenses as well. 200,000,000 App Store downloads, 5500 Apps available, and now being copied by Microsoft, Google, and RIM. Form factor and touch-centricity copied by both Microsoft-OEMs and RIM (who's also introducing a no-keyboard Blackberry Storm!). And Palm? Er... Anyone heard from Palm lately?
And the Winner Is!
None of the players today.
For the Pundit Round, be sure to check out Daring Fireball's awesome set of links, and MacDailyNew's Compendium of iPhone Naysayers.
