Blogosphere On iPhone: Webmasters Interview Part 2

Last week we’ve run the first part of an interview with six webmasters from USA, France, UK, Russia, Portugal, and Germany, talking about Apple’s iPhone. This is the second part of this three parts interview.

The answers are listed in alphabetical order, according to the names of the publications whose webmasters answered them.

Apple Gazette
Answering for Apple Gazette (the only site not dedicated exclusively to the iPhone in this interview) is Michael Murphey from the USA.

Q: What do you think still needs improvement in the device, i.e.: what would you like to see in iPhone v2.0?
A: That’s tough to say at this point too…we’re still pretty early in the game…but I would definitely like to see support of 3rd party applications. I get the idea of not letting just anyone create for the iPhone, but I hope that developers are allowed to make their popular applications, like Daylight and other business management and time management applications compatible with the iPhone. It would be a huge asset to Apple to allow this thing to be opened up a little…and I hope they make the decision to do that.
I would also like to, and fully expect to, see games on the iPhone. Every cellphone in existence (practically) has at least a few games for it. I can’t imagine the iPhone being that different.

Q: Based on your readers’ comments – is the public eager to adopt the iPhone, or are they still cautious about it?
A: I think this first iPhone will be very much like the first iPod. Lots of Apple fans, and early adopters (as I assume most our reading audience are) will be ready to get it from day one. I think it will take time to be as common as the iPod is today, but I won’t be surprised if it happens.

Blog iPhone France : .iPhon.fr
Answering for Blog iPhone France is Laurent Gatignol from France.

Q: What do you think still needs improvement in the device, i.e.: what would you like to see in iPhone v2.0?
A: 3G in Europe is more and more common and iPhone is clearly behind competitors in that regard. It will have to be addressed quickly to stay competitive, but also to drive money for mobile enriched Internet usage for the European carriers, pushing them to market it like other competitors’ devices.
Another feature that may be a danger for the success of the iPhone is clearly the lack of third party applications. That’s what makes the difference between a pocket sized computer and a standard phone. Today, Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices can be enriched by thousands of applications, many of them being freeware, offering everyone a way to tailor the device to his personal needs (after all it is also a PDA: Personal Digital Assistant).
Last but not least, I wonder what will be the acceptance in business world for a device featuring no hardware keyboard, whereas the Blackberry, Treos, and HTC devices are so widely used now for email on the go.

Q: Based on your readers’ comments – is the public eager to adopt the iPhone, or are they still cautious about it?
A: iPhone’s announcement raised an incredible buzz in France, with people being really attracted by the design of the device and by the interface. One major concern may be the price, but not as much.
I’ll use two other polls ran on www.iPhon.fr in the last two weeks to try and illustrate that.
First one was a question on the price. The results are: a little more than 50 % of the people that answered the poll will buy the iPhone if it’s sold for 400 Euro (around US $500). We may expect that with a contract the price might decrease a little, pushing this number to more than 50 %. In that case, the price will not be a real blocker for widespread adoption.
The other poll was about the mobile carrier fidelity of French consumers . The results are incredible: people are so in love with the device that the majority, at 72%, will accept leaving their current carrier to be able to buy an iPhone !
I think that we can conclude that yes, the public is eager to adopt the iPhone and will be able to pay more than they would for a classic phone, and even switch carriers if necessary!

iPhone Countdown
Answering for iPhone Countdown is Dave Churchill from the UK (England, to be exact).

Q: What do you think still needs improvement in the device, i.e.: what would you like to see in iPhone v2.0?
A: 3G network coverage would be useful here in the UK and across Europe. A friend of mine working at T-Mobile says they are implementing new network technology, but we are way behind the US on a lot of the features. Bigger capacity/storage will follow over the next year, but Apple will need to keep the costs down, otherwise it will be cheaper to buy a laptop!

Q: Based on your readers’ comments – is the public eager to adopt the iPhone, or are they still cautious about it?
A: I think most people are eager to see what the fuss is all about, and I would imagine that it will become the new must have iPod, but it does come down to costs. Some people are calling it an “elitists toy”, which [the name] I think will disappear as soon as it hits the streets.

Iphone News (Russia)
Answering for iPhone News is Arthur Malosiev from Russia.

Q: What do you think still needs improvement in the device, i.e.: what would you like to see in iPhone v2.0?
A: I would like to see GPS. All the rest is a matter of time and demand. But GPS is necessary.

Q: Based on your readers’ comments – is the public eager to adopt the iPhone, or are they still cautious about it?
A: Russians are skeptical about novelties. But the iPhone raised an extraordinary interest. The first day after its announcement iPhones.ru received more than 11,000 visitors. For half a year before that (which is for how long the site was active) the number of visitors was 20-30 a day. Already now many are ready to pay huge amounts of money for this phone.

iPhone Portugal
Answering for iPhone Portugal is Helder Souza from Portugal.

Q: What do you think still needs improvement in the device, i.e.: what would you like to see in iPhone v2.0?
A: It’s hard to say, since the original iPhone hasn’t even been released on the market. But one of them for sure is 3G capability, since it’s missing this feature, and the capability of making VoIP calls.

Q: Based on your readers’ comments – is the public eager to adopt the iPhone, or are they still cautious about it?
A: Oh, here in Portugal it’s hard to say, because 260 days still remain before it’s released in Portugal, but i would say that for now, people here don’t even know about the existence of the iPhone.

iPhone Weblog (Germany)
Answering for iPhone Weblog is Torsten Tromm from Germany.

Q: What do you think still needs improvement in the device, i.e.: what would you like to see in iPhone v2.0?
A: In the long run the iPhone needs a fast mobile internet connection. This is, at least in Europe, a fast growing market, and people will get used to use it quite soon. A 2.0 megapixel camera is not appropriate for a mobile device in the year 2007. This is actually a disappointment and has to be improved. Moreover, I would like to see more memory capacity or exchangeable memory media in iPhone 2.0.

Q: Based on your readers’ comments – is the public eager to adopt the iPhone, or are they still cautious about it?
A: Probably the iPhone is going to go the same way as the iPod did. Right after its release it will be mainly a nerd / geek toy. But it will spread fast, because the iPod did a lot of market preparation. I could imagine that most of the people that always have an iPod and a cell phone in their pocket are going to buy an iPhone.

We would like to thank all the webmasters that participated in this special feature. In upcoming part 3 we’ll be asking whether Apple has set reasonable sales goals for the iPhone (10 million units in the first year after its release), as well as printing additional comments these webmasters might have. Stay tuned for that.

Tags: app, Apple, application, case, Europe, game, GPS, iPhone, News, OS, Russia, UK, USA, voip

Related posts:

1. Blogosphere On iPhone: Webmasters Interview Part 1
2. Interview With Apple Russia IMC Director
3. Interview with the creator of Books.app for iPhone

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