Apple iPhone to revolutionise mobile search?

January 11, 2007
by Latitude

In a week heavy with mobile search news, some are wondering if the newly announced Apple iPhone (which has already attracted a lawsuit from Cisco) will provide a breakthrough in mobile search adoption.

Kevin Newcomb at Search Engine Watch writes:

The iPhone, expected to ship in June, will come bundled with Google search and maps, and Yahoo OneSearch, Go and mail. If the device catches on in nearly the way the iPod has, that means that local search on mobile devices is about to become a very big deal.

There is a glaring flaw in this projection, though: Apple has gone for an astonishingly antiquated approach in rolling out the iPhone, limiting distribution to those who are customers of US mobile network Cingular. (Cingular will soon be owned by AT&T.) Veteran CEO and technology innovator Tom Evslin points out that Apple had the opportunity to reinvent the mobile telecommunications sector and has passed with this old school way of doing business.

Short term this is a good tactic for Apple because it protects the iPod franchise for a while. Long term I think it’s terrible strategy. It invites an endrun from someone who IS willing to reinvent the industry or simply allies themselves with a Cingular competitor.

…Remember how wonderful the Mac GUI was? But it only ran on machines from Apple. Remember how crappy Windows was at first? But it ran on machines from everyone and their brother. And now there’s Linux – even less restricted – running on anything that moves. Tell me again why it makes sense to have a phone that runs only on a service from at&t (in the US).

So perhaps the iPhone will revolutionise mobile search, but it seems more likely that a competitor’s phone – with wide open distribution, not a limited market of potential customers – will actually break things wide open.

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