barriers to use
iPhone owners use Google more frequently than other mobile device users.
Google on Wednesday said it has seen 50 times more search requests coming from Apple iPhones than any other mobile handset — a revelation so astonishing that the company originally suspected it had made an error culling its own data.
“We thought it was a mistake and made our engineers check the logs again,” Vic Gundotra, head of Google’s mobile operations told the Financial Times during this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
iPhone owners are using Loopt more frequently than than other device users.
… Loopt, a location-based social-networking startup, reached 100,000 iPhone downloads only about a week after the App Store opened. The average iPhone user also is 47 times as active on Loopt as those on other types of phones, said Loopt cofounder and CEO Sam Altman.
“You can make such a beautiful app, and it’s so nice to use, so quickly, on the iPhone,” Altman said.
But this exchange the article on thestandard.com sums it up for me …
“The statement that somehow the Web has not been mobile until the iPhone showed up is absurd,” said David Rivas, vice president of S60 software technology management at Nokia. He also said the company’s current S60 software platform can do most of what the iPhone can.
Tapulous, a vendor of iPhone applications including the Tap Tap Revolution game and a Twitter client called Twinkle, is already beginning to exhaust the relatively small user base of the iPhone, said Bart Decrem, CEO of Tapulous.
“I wish there was another place where I could offer this experience,” Decrem said.
“I’ve got a couple hundred million devices for you,” Rivas said.
“Oh, yeah, if you could give me a developer environment … and a delivery channel,” Decrem shot back.
Even Rivas acknowledged that Apple has broken new ground by establishing a new kind of relationship with carriers, in which it can run its own online software store.
(emphasis added)
… and there it is.
I have often heard that friends (who shall go unnamed) opine that the biggest weakness of the iphone is that it is a consumer device and not an open computing platform. The reasoning goes that they should be able to install whatever apps they want from any source they want.
I have also heard many, like David Rivas, that compare their own functional specifications to the iPhone and wonder what all of the fuss is about.
Two dynamics are at play here and they both have to do with the barrier to entry. Is the iPhone the only device that can run Loopt? Nope. But it is the only device that allows me to get Loopt from a source I trust (Apple) and the iPhone is the only device that makes the installation and execution of the software so incredibly easy that the experience is a joy and not a laborious task. Add to that the automated notifications for software updates and Apple has just lowered on more barrier to use.
The more open and flexible the system the more expertise it takes to operate it with any level of efficiency. It also takes a great deal of domain knowledge to know which source is a trusted source for the software that runs on the system. Deep expertise and domain knowledge are critical components to mad geek-fu skillz but consumers do not always have the time or motivation to acquire them.
Here is a tidbit from MicroSoft CEO Steve Ballmer …
In the competition between PCs and Macs, we outsell Apple 30-to-1. But there is no doubt that Apple is thriving. Why? Because they are good at providing an experience that is narrow but complete, while our commitment to choice often comes with some compromises to the end-to-end experience.
I think Senior Ballmer misses a key point – Apple is not just about “narrow but complete” experiences. Apple designs products, services, and systems to be used by people that do not have the time or motivation required to wade through all of the choices to discover the magical combination that works. When I say “works” I mean it figuratively, as in “that works for me dude”, and as in it literally functions. I once installed a print driver back on Wndows 95 that shut down my video driver. That was ajoy to troubleshoot.
It is more accurate to say that Apple (and many other companies like Netflix, Starbucks, and the like) has lowered the barriers to use rather than simply providing a “narrow but complete” experience. Apple has taken the time and invested the money to learn how people use things and they have designed devices and systems that function in way that matches those patterns of use. They provided a phone with a truly intuitive operational interface and they have now provided a trustworthy source of applications to extend the use of their device in a multitude of directions.
A bulleted list of functional specs is not good enough. Yes, I am talking to you David Rivas.