Will the Cloud be a threat to the iPhone?

by WyldKard on April 2, 2009

There was almost no hesitation when we ditched our Danger Sidekick III for the . It’s not that the Sidekick II was vastly inferior, or that the iPhone was so revolutionary. Rather, it’s because we were never wholly vested in the Sidekick platform, because there was little that it offered that was inherently unique compared to ’s offering. In great part, this is because T-Mobile locked the Sidekick down, not only in terms of bluetooth functionality and the lack of MMS (sound familiar?), but because the Sidekick’s application store was practically empty of anything worthwhile. Sure, there was the occasional application of merit, but we’re talking a small handful of applications that were by no means phenomenal, and the difficulty in getting ahold of the SDK, and then managing to get an application into the Sidekick’s online store, pretty much dissuaded anyone from developing for the platform.

managed to correct much of the problems the Sidekick faced with more polished applications, a great distribution model, and general availability of the SDK to consumers. The result is a very flourishing marketplace for applications, and combined with the ’s hardware prowess, there are few limiting factors in the platform’s application growth (adult content not withstanding). Now that other viable competitors are slowly materializing (e.g. Google’s Android and Palm’s Pre), ’s polish will only be one factor in keeping customer’s glued to the platform. More specifically, it’s a user’s reliance on the AppStore to customize their experience that will determine how long they’ll stick with the system.

has done a great job with its influencing of low-prices in the AppStore, with many useful applications even being free. Even $1 applications receive a lot of attention because of the impulse-buying effect – to most people, $1 is a negligible amount of money even during the recession. And with this impulse buying, even a handful of applications will increase a customer’s hesitancy to dump the for a competitor’s platform. After all, no matter how sexy the competition’s device may be, there’s that one guy who can’t go without his favorite iFart application in his pocket at all times. As the competition may not have the same extensibility as the because it’s application library will undoubtedly be smaller (and different), ’s most powerful weapon against attrition is what they don’t directly produce: AppStore apps.

Yet the interesting conundrum here is not the effect of proprietary applications, but rather applications that leverage the cloud. Take for example our recent adoption of Google’s applications; whereas before, one of the ’s clear draws was its synchronization with iCal, we now have a far more flexible system utilizing Google Calendar, in that we can not only sync it with iCal, but make changes on any computer connected to the . In effect, the ’s calendar application has become that much less useful, and so envisioning our switch to a new mobile handset has just become slightly more reasonable.

What we’ve seen of late is a rise in the popularity of cloud-based apps like Evernote, and there’s every reason to assume that these kinds of clients will find native ports on every major handheld platform over the next several months. And that poses a further threat to the ’s attrition rate, because if users are prone to adopting technologies based in the cloud, instead of on traditional applications with direct one-to-one synchronization (e.g. using Evernote instead of Things), then there’s less and less of a reason to rely on the for accomplishing specific tasks. After all, if my calendar, e-mail client, to-do list, et al are all available on every device, with little (if any) changes between them, then only the core user experience will matter when we decide which device to use. And with that, we’re back where we were before the Sidekick, , and other smartphones – in a sea of basically similar devices, where core polish and price will ultimately matter.

In the meantime, we’re still vested in the because of the applications we love, but we’re very well aware that this connection with our is only as strong as the ’s SDK and AppStore compared to those of other devices. Practically speaking, if the cloud becomes more attractive overall, only a great SDK and AppStore will keep the in the lead.

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