Myth 9 & 10: iPhone Myth, Panic, & Threat

Top 10 Apple Myths of 2006

Myth 9 & 10: iPhone Myth, Panic, & Threat

Here are two iPhone myths rolled together. The first stated that the iPod no longer matter because mobile phones now have the capacity to play MP3s; the second is that Apple would either not be able to make its own phone, or would be stymied by the problem of not being able to call it the “iPhone.”

The Fallout

CNET blogger Michael Kanellos recently decided that Apple could never repeat the iPod success in the phone arena because phones are just too complicated for Apple to figure out.

Quick, somebody tell CNET that Apple has designed its own custom VLSIs for decades and custom engineers everything from video devices to Enterprise RAID units. I think they can manage a phone.

Palm CEO Ed Colligan chimed in to point out that Apple could never catch up with its own advanced phone knowledge, and other analysts noted that even Sony couldn't figure out how to build phones without forming a partnership with Ericsson.

A gadget rumor website blew a smoke screen about the iPhone being announced early in a blog posting tagged "Apple," only to disappoint readers who later found out that this “iPhone” was just a new brand name released by Cisco’s Linksys group for its latest batch of VoIP phone sets.

Apple had previously bought up rights to the iPhone name in various countries and owns the iPhone.org domain, but Apple also owns such random trademarks as Vingle, which we can only hope never actually gets used.

Really, was the rather odd name “iPod” a key factor in that product’s success, or does its name not really matter?

The Myth, Unwoven

RoughlyDrafted first presented why mobile phones playing MP3s were no threat to the iPod in the iPod Phone Myth, then presented why simply pairing iTunes music features with a phone were not going to bring Apple success in the phone industry in Why Mobile Phones Make Bad iPods and iPod, Therefore iPhone?.

An iPhone Worth Talking About presented the abilities Apple had to offer in the phone market.

More recent articles presented how Apple can integrate features that drive the iPod’s success, both with the iTV and in a new iPhone, regardless of what the products might end up actually being named: