However, the real reason in my mind that the iPhone wins is it’s ability to “stay in social touch”. The email, the SMS, the browsing experience has enabled much of the behavior that social networkers have mastered already on the laptop or desktop. It’s not about the technology, it is about how the device helps you socialize.
Till now the mobile was a “cameraphone”, “smartphone”, and perhaps a messaging device (particularly blackberry). The enhancements have often focused at making it a better cameraphone and increasingly on uploading some of this content… eg photos to flickr. The activity focus has been on upload and send. Retrieval that isn’t pushed has been slow, difficult or frustrating whether web pages, podcasts, or even maps.
By contrast and perhaps as luck will have it… the iPhone is a social device. It fills the gaps in calls with keeping in touch. It is helping us keep in touch with the peripheral vision whether facebook updates, twitter streams, IM or other apps or browsing one may do. It’s also very easy to forward content (web pages etc from the iphone.
We’ve seen some of this emerging already. Recently some blogs have referred to the new browser wars. Money was recently raised by a new browser startup while Mobile Safari has now been seen on a Samsung phone. Then we have Flock as the social browser etc. And yesterday we saw Android demoed on yet another large touch screen HTC mobile. I actually wonder whether in five years there will be a mobile in existence that has a keypad? Is viewing replacing texting, replacing calling, as the central focus of the mobile? If / As this happens then how does my new mobile change the relationship I have with all my other devices?
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