PriceSCAN Blog

The iPhone sports a 3.5 inch color screen that constitutes most of the face of the 11.6 mm thick "smart" phone (Jobs claims it's the thinnest such device on the market). In addition to being a phone and a two megapixel camera, it's also an iPod and fully web-enabled internet device, running Safari on OS X. To be available in June, the iPhone is slated to start at $499 for the 4 GB version, and stepping up to 8 GB will run you $599. Cingular plans to offer its service on Cupertino's new offering, which by virtue of its use of the GSM standard is a so-called "world phone", hence Apple's plans to sell the unit in Europe and Asia later this year. This phone has the same proprietary interface as other iPods, meaning it's compatible with all the speaker systems and auto adapters that utilize that feature. Thus the iPhone can only help extend the iPod's lock-in effect from media players to the broader consumer electronics market. However you feel about Apple, you have to admit this is a masterstroke, both in terms of product creativity and strategic thinking (for a contrasting example, see "zune (zōōn) v. To violently drop in price, esp. before the holidays.").
Right now about a third of music player sales are non-iPod, and some competitors are trying to out-slick Cupertino in the design wars (see "Cooler Vibez Than iPod?") But by extending iPod hegemony to the phone space, Apple has taken a quantum leap in terms of its competitive position. Fold in iTunes and you have to wonder what all this might mean in terms of overall dominance of media technology. Remember those "1984"-themed Mac ads? We may yet find out that the closest thing to a corporate Big Brother wears a black turtleneck.