It’s perhaps the most hyped consumer electronics product today, and it might not even exist: Apple’s music phone. Nobody seems to have seen it, at least nobody who’s talking. Nobody quite knows what it will look like or how it will work. No one even knows what it will be called.
But just about everyone – consumers, analysts, investors – is convinced that Apple’s working on one. And many are betting that the Cupertino, Calif., company is going to unveil it at the Macworld conference in San Francisco next month.
The anticipation for what’s been dubbed the “iPhone” has been building for months now with a steady stream of news stories, analyst
reports and rumor sites highlighting and analyzing every tidbit that trickles out from alleged suppliers, every new patent filing from the
company and every blurry pseudo mock-up photo of the product.
The tremendous amount of buzz about a product that Apple has yet to announce speaks volumes about Apple’s marketing prowess, of course, not to mention its penchant for secrecy. But it also could be a strong indicator of what the product could mean for the company and for the mobile phone industry.
“People view Apple as having the potential to create a market disruption,” said Chris Crotty, an analyst with research firm iSuppli.
For investors, who have bid Apple’s stock up 14 percent just in the last two months, much of the excitement has to do with the size of the mobile phone market. Manufacturers are expected to ship some 1 billion phones this year, according to research firm IDC.
Even if Apple only captured 1 percent of that market, that would translate into 10 million “iPhones” – and potentially billions of dollars in new revenue.
And some in and around the industry worry that Apple could take a larger share of the market.
The company’s iPod players and iTunes service have dominated the digital music business to date. Consumers have invested a lot of time
and energy putting together their iTunes libraries, analysts note.
Thanks to that, music on mobile phones may not really take off until Apple gets into the game.
“I know if I buy a phone that says iPhone that it’s going to work well with iTunes and it’s going to play music,” said Phil Leigh, president of consulting firm Inside Digital Media. “Right now there are probably a dozen phones that hold music and I don’t know which online sites they work with.”
But the buzz is about more than just the connection to iTunes. For more than a year, Motorola has been making the ROKR and other phones for Cingular that can sync with iTunes, but they haven’t taken the market by storm.
The ROKR got poor reviews. By contrast, there’s a lot of excitement about how Apple itself might design a cell phone. The company has made a name for itself by taking complex technology and making it easy for consumers to use, analysts note.
With all the new features that have been bolted on to them in recent years – many of them difficult to access or use – cell phones are crying out for the “Apple treatment,” some analysts say.
The buzz around Apple’s possible phone indicates that people are not satisfied with the options on the market, said Michael Gartenberg,
wireless analysts with Jupiter Research.
“The other handset vendors should all take note that no one is talking about their products with the same level of enthusiasm,”
Gartenberg said.
To be sure, until Apple actually unveils the iPhone, there’s no guarantee that it will. Company officials have said only that they are watching the market, but, notoriously secretive as usual, haven’t disclosed any plans. Various patent filings over the years have hinted
that the company is working on the problem, but what’s in Apple’s or other company’s research labs can often take years to see the light of day – if it ever does at all.
(The San Jose Mercury News is a member of the ap News Service.)
