الاثنين، 1 أغسطس 2016

The advent of jesus phone and how it ended the domination of the people's phone

" the jesus phone and how it killed the blackberry"

 
The iphone had a cult following even before it was launched and even before a single piece of it was sold.In 2007 the year of Iraq invasion and Paris Hilton’s jail sentence , the jesus phone was launched. Soon after its announcement,The blog Gizmodo dubbed it the Jesus phone ,as Apple for the first time used spiritual overtones for its iPhone launch. Its print and TV ads screamed “ Touching is believing"  showing a finger reaching out in dark to touch the iphone. The visual impact of the sleek iPhone overshadowed its features. Journalists played along its tune, comparing Michael Angelo's Sistine chapel painting of God stretching to touch the finger of Adam. The iPhone’s retail debut was termed iday. The official day when iPhone opened for retail was June 29th 2007 , which was also the day of Roman holiday celebrating the feast of martyred apostles ,St Peter and St Paul.By the time the 'iPhone: finally made it to the market,it had already inspired 11000 in print articles and  generated 69 million of google search
Meanwhile to rivals such as RIM, Motorola, Nokia, the iPhone's  popularity was illogical. Its battery lasted less that 10 hours , it operated on an older slower and second generation network,the network carriers were stretched strained by music, movies and other downloads. This particularly hit RIM hard.After unprecedented success and blitzkrieg growth since 2003 , it faced an adversary it did not understand. According to David Yach .RIM’s chief technology officer ,going by conventional smartphone ecosystem at that time, iPhone should have been a disaster.However the iPhone's masterstroke flipped the raisan de etre of smartphone from something that was functional to a product that was beautiful.




 Meanwhile RIM faced trouble from the carriers front.The carriers would not allow RIM to include more than a simple browser as it would crash its networks. After the iPhone autopsy, Blackberry’s bosses of realised that the ground beneath their feet was shifting. If carriers continued to embrace iPhone inspite of its apps and mutimedia applications chocking their networks. Blackberry’s positioning of efficient and secure email and the long battery life was under threat. In reality Blackberry was actually competing with Mac and not a Nokia.However RIM core market of corporate customers was safe at that time as the iPhone could not match blackberry’s reliable keyboard and in house network delivery of secure emails.However the consumer mass market where Blackberry Pearl was competing, needed a full browser . Blackberry led the smartphone market at that time as it managed to put email in people’s pockets. Now the iPhone was putting the entire internet in its pocket.
Continuing and Compounding matters was the conflict between RIM and and the carriers . Up against AT & T and its exclusive multiyear deal to sell the iPhone, Verizon who was currently RIM’s network provider had little interest in Blackberry’s new plan to counter iPhone by launching a new keyboard with an innovative track pad to take on iPhones touch screen keyboard and by building a larger screen. However Verizon who was caught off guard with the ascendancy of iPhone had little patience with what Mike Lazaridis termed as “ Jesus phone killer’ and wanted blackberry to quickly respond to iphone with similar touch screen, something RIM was not willing to do


Meanwhile Verizon was still smarting from a a lost opportunity to tie up with iphone 2 years earlier as it rejected Steve Jobs offer to partner with Apple’s new phone. Verizon who was known for its stickler for bandwidth reliability clearly declined Apple’s offer as it did not want to relinquish control of its network to an un known and unseen smartphone which Apple wanted to design. Like Mike Lazaridis verizon’s core executives .According to “ Sean silcoff “author of the book “ “Loosing the signal” which chronicles the fall of blackberry had correctly predicted that the iPhone traffic would create a gridlock on AT and T’s network What it did not anticipate that consumers did not care. A multi billion dollar market in carrier revenue was about to open up and AT and T had the lock on the hottest device . RIM’s new blackberry Bold was simply no match for the jesus smartphone.

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