I agree with FW that 2011 will see a huge explosion in smartphones. 2010 was already a huge boom. But the interesting potential lies in the billions of people in the developing world, can they be enticed to join the smartphone world with cheap smartphones priced under $100? I think they can. Virgin Mobile has an Android device for under $200, no contract and only $25/month for unlimited data and 300 minutes. That's enticing, and it's probably just going to get cheaper. Android has the price point where it can lure people in to a smartphone from a regular phone, and it has the platform where it can keep most of the people. The big question to me is what is Apple's response going to be? Is Apple just going to sit there and let Android take the low-end market, or is Apple going to proactively respond and release a lower end phone, ie., iPhone Nano, that can compete with the low-end Android phones? The same thing in tablets, will Apple release a 7" tablet to compete with the low-end Android tablets?
To be honest, I am a little baffled that they haven't already. Around this time last year I wrote about why Apple would use a 960x640 screen in it's 4th iPhone* and I naturally expected a product line split. It would have made perfect sense to have a top-end 4" 960x640 phone and a low-end phone using the old screen, less RAM and other money-saving components.
Perhaps they wanted to hold off another year protecting their high margins, knowing that even in the developed world, a lot of people would have brought the low-end iPhone instead of the high-end one? In any case, it would be interesting to see if this summer they'll introduce a lower-end iPhone or if they'll continue to be an exclusively top-end provider.
I naturally expected a product line split. It would have made perfect sense to have a top-end 4" 960x640 phone and a low-end phone using the old screen, less RAM and other money-saving components.
Since the 2009 introduction of the iPhone 3GS, when the iPhone 3G went on sale for $99, they've done exactly that. A year later, the 3GS followed it at that price.
The downside is that when the 3GS was finally discontinued, it was two years old and had 1/4 the RAM of the then-current iPhone 4, leading to maintenance trouble for the OS and app developers.
I read your blog post from Dec 2009 and your predictions were pretty dead on. Please write another post for your predictions in 2011 for the iPhone and iPad.
