[mbell]

At the time the iphone was released I had one of the early HTC touch screen + slide out keyboard phones (Tytn or something like that). I recall laughing about the first iphones. Terrible e-mail support, no MMS, my year old phone had twice the capabilities. I couldn't understand why anyone would want such an expensive phone that was so functionally handicapped. What I didn't understand at the time was that the phone was never targeted at me, it was targeted at the general consumers who didn't care that it couldn't handle 5 e-mail accounts, VPN, etc, etc.

The iphone wasn't so much a matter of technological inovation as it was one of market building. Apple lept ahead of the incumbents by realizing that a 'smartphone' could be a device every consumer wanted, rather than something that 'business folks' used. It wasn't so much that the incumbents couldn't have thought up something very similar, it was that they were caught up dealing with their current target markets: business people whom needed a blackberry or Wmobile phone with exchange support, whom didn't want change, they wanted a device that did its job and didn't require them to think about it. Its very difficult for a company to have the foresight to produce a product that they know their current customers will hate.

This is classic incumbents vs newcomers leap frogging, if you haven't read "The Innovator's Dilemma" its worth checking out as it speaks directly to this pattern of development.

[slantyyz]

>> The iphone wasn't so much a matter of technological inovation as it was one of market building

I disagree. I think the iPhone was the first smartphone that worked. The killer app on the phone was that it was the first phone to have a modern mobile browser.

It was not a browser that "didn't suck", it was a damned good browser. I had an Eee at the time, and I would pick the tiny-by-comparison screen of the iPhone's browser over the Eee any day. Why? Because the smart tap-to-zoom really used the screen real estate effectively. On the Eee, I'd have to use both horizontal and vertical scrolling to read some content.

No mobile browser before the iPhone's version of Safari even came remotely close.

[mbell]

The problem is that it didn't work as a 'smartphone' at all. It couldn't connect to blackberry's e-mail server, it couldn't connect to exchange, it couldn't send an MMS, it couldn't multitask or run background apps, it couldn't copy-paste. The iPhone was completely incapable of replacing existing smartphones for quite some time. It took blackberry's monopoly on 'push' e-mail dying and several updates to iOS before it could actually compete in the existing smartphone market.

What original iPhone is, was the first 'smartphone' like device that every consumer wanted.

[slantyyz]

>> couldn't connect to blackberry's e-mail server

>> it couldn't connect to exchange

>> it couldn't send an MMS

Didn't realize those were "must-haves" for a smartphone (an enterprise smartphone, maybe), because I never did that with any of my Windows Phones prior to getting an iPhone. I used my Windows Phone for my consulting work, by the way.

>> it couldn't multitask or run background apps

That's a double edged sword. That's one thing I hated on my Windows Phone. If you accidentally left the camera running in Windows Phone and sent it to the background, kiss your remaining battery life for the day goodbye.

>> it couldn't copy-paste

On my list of things to have on a smartphone, that's near the bottom. Yes, it was a pain, but far from being at the top of my list of "smartphone criteria"

>> The iPhone was completely incapable of replacing existing smartphones for quite some time

Well, I don't know about other people, but it replaced my Windows phone with no issue.

--edit--

To be clear, my primary business use of a smartphone is to manage my contacts, calendar and e-mail.

[mbell]

> Didn't realize those were "must-haves" for a smartphone (an enterprise smartphone, maybe), because I never did that with any of my Windows Phones prior to getting an iPhone. I used my Windows Phone for my consulting work, by the way.

The _vast_ majority of the smartphone market at the time was enterprise. The consumer smartphone business didn't exist in any significant way. I had a Wmobile phone and didn't use exchange either, however you and I were an extremely small minority. Apple's inovation was changing that, opening up a real consumer smartphone market.

[slantyyz]

Now that you bring it up, an interesting observation on my peer circle pre-iPhone:

All the enterprise users I knew had Blackberries. Everyone else I knew bought their own Windows Phones (and some Palm users) and most did not use Exchange. So maybe it could be argued that to some degree, Windows Phones were the only equivalent to a "consumer" smartphone at the time.

[freehunter]

*Windows Mobile phone

Windows Phone is completely different.

[slantyyz]

Oops, that's what I meant.

[zubiaur]

Actually, a obscure one did. Picsel browser, available on certain sony clie (palm OS) pdas had a very decent rendering engine for its time, tap to zoom and very smart gestures for zooming in and out (tap tap-drag). Miles ahead of the competition (ie, blazer and such...)

[ZeroGravitas]

Opera was pretty good and did all sorts of clever things to make browsing easier on phones, Nintendo Ds's , set-top boxes etc.

[thewileyone]

This is total rubbish. I had a HTC TyTn II and everything on it worked, yes even IE. I could do everything I could on a conventional browser on that phone.

Websites have changed to accomodate mobile browsers now so Safari looks like it works great. Travel back to 2007 and it would suck just like everything else.

[dredmorbius]

The Palm browser, as is noted, was actually pretty decent (I used it on the Centro).

The Android default browser (granted, appearing after Apple's) is superior on several points, in particular automatically zooming/scaling to the main body text of most web pages.