Compelling Choices

Here’s the one-sentence explanation as to why most phones & tablets are failing to attract sales: they aren’t providing compelling reasons for people to buy them.

The iPhone 3G was the first really compelling iPhone:

• It provided all of the features people really needed (3G, GPS)
• It had the iPhone OS, which was very much better than what came before it
• Apps had just been introduced, which in itself would end up being the reason for many people to get the phone.

No other phone could match what the 3G provided, and it was the release that made the iPhone. Another example, however, is the Motorola Droid. An inferior phone with an inferior OS, but it was also a compelling choice because:

• It had a better camera and screen than everything else (though not for long).
• It was available on the best American carrier, unlike the iPhone.

That wasn’t very many reasons for the Droid, but you really only need one or two compelling reasons to get a good share of the market. Compare this to the Palm Pre. It was generally regarded as the first phone to be truly equal to the iPhone - or at least, close to it. However, the only compelling reason for getting this phone was because it was the only next-gen OS phone that Sprint had. It’s also the closest thing that Palm had to a success - the Pixi, Pre 2, Veer, Pre 3 and TouchPad had nothing that could be considered a compelling reason to buy, and it was reflected in their disappointing sales numbers.

Android grew mostly because of artificial reasons, but they were compelling reasons nonetheless. They got people on board by having the things people wanted before the iPhone or anything else could provide it. The problem that Google now has is that its gimmicks are unsustainable. A reason is only compelling if your competition doesn’t have it also, and hardware tricks are too easy for Apple to add in the future.

Eventually, iPhones will be on every carrier, and the iPhone will have everything feature worth having that Android phones will. What gimmicks can they add? A 5G phone that provides further overkill in download speed with further compromised battery life and service availability is not compelling. A 600dpi screen, versus a 300dpi screen, is an indistinguishable difference and is not compelling.

The thing that makes iOS compelling over everything else is the user experience, the appealing design, and the app ecosystem. You can add platform lock-in as more users get iPhones. As long as iOS has these and other phones don’t, those reasons can’t be taken away.

To build a device that will succeed, you need to take these advantages away from Apple. You need a phone that has a nicer experience, a more appealing design, or a better ecosystem. So far, nobody has that.

Peter Bright of Ars Technica somewhat gets it. He describes Windows Phone 7 as an OS that needs great hardware to match it. What it actually needs is a hardware-software combination that exceeds the iPhone in any significant way. Give people a compelling reason to get the phone. Right now, there isn’t one.

Windows Phone’s best shot will be when it gets phones like the Nokia N9 that have a design that many people will prefer to the iPhone. Many people like color, after all. However, it’s only a matter of time before Apple does color too, and correctly like with the N9. Then you have to search for another compelling reason.

So, if you want to figure out what the next iPhone is going to be like, look at the compelling choices available on other devices, and think of what Apple must do to squash them, without interfering with its other compelling reasons. I expect Apple to try really hard to get 4G on the device - but if they do, the device will still have comparatively better battery life than the competition. They might add a real dash of color to the phone just to beat Nokia to the punch. They’ve already announced decent notifications, which ends one of Android/webOS’s compelling reasons.