Apple phone speculation

The answer is always driven by usability.

How many of you have a MP3 player? Okay. How many of you also carry a phone? Exactly.

Right now, you have to carry two devices if you want the best MP3 player on the market and the best phone the market. Even though your phone may be capable of playing MP3s, very few people use their phone as a dedicated music player also. There are usability issues such as having to use a dongle for headphones, playlist or format compatibility issues, and most importantly, battery life. The LG Chocolate VX8500 from Verizon is one of the first MP3/cellphones that has had some success in the market. It looks nice, works well as a phone, and has a reasonably well thought out music player and an integrated Verizon VCAST music store. It does a lot of things correctly, but it’s still marred by requiring an optional USB cable to synchronize the music, an external dongle for using headphones, and most importantly, a 4 hour battery life when listening to music.

The Apple mobile phone

The market for an integrated MP3 and mobile phone device exists. It would solve the problem of having to carry two separate devices. The problem is that an integrated phone will only work if it has the same battery life as the separate devices.

Although we liked to think that technology moves quickly, battery technology has not seen the same types of innovations that semiconductors have. In order to provide a dual-use mobile device, the solution will have to come from more-efficient silicon as opposed to fancier batteries. Likewise, this is why the dual battery rumor going around is false. The dual battery has been proposed as a way Apple will ensure that battery life isn’t affected by integration – you have a dedicated iPod battery and a dedicated phone battery. The problem is that if you’re iPod battery is completely gone, and you still have a full charge on the “phone” battery, and you know you only need another hour of playback before you get home, wouldn’t it make sense to be able to use some of that capacity?

In essence, the limiting factor of the Apple mobile phone has nothing to do with interface design, or about doing a VOIP design. Apple is a problem focused company, and there is zero doubt in my mind or Steve Job’s mind that merging the phone and MP3 player makes sense eventually. The issue is strictly a technical one. Can you integrate the two devices while preserving the usability of having two discrete devices?

The solution is in hardware, and NVIDIA’s next-generation portable system-on-a-chip is at the top of my short-list on the products that will actually have the efficiency to make it happen. If you have the hardware, the rest will fall into place.

Expect a phone with market leading battery life where music and communications are the primary focus. It’s not about some sort of newfangled technology – it’s about making things easier by letting consumers carry own portable device instead of two. Expect robust PIM support (contacts, calendar, etc.) but don’t expect it to be a “PDA” in the traditional sense.

Closing Thoughts

Analysts are famous for being horrendously wrong when it comes to technology. Even though this article is based upon reasonable assumptions and publicly available knowledge, this article is still pure speculation. In fact, market analysts are often wrong. Many professional analysts believed that the original Xbox would sell 100 million units. Some choice quotes from professional analysts regarding the original iPod include:

"I question the company's ability to sell into a tight consumer market right now at the iPod's current price."

” Apple lacks the richness of Sony's product offering. And introducing new consumer products right now is risky, especially if they cannot be priced attractively”

“the iPod will likely stand out for its large storage capacity but [the iPod] may have trouble digging out a niche in the market.“

So what will we see at Macworld this week? I have no idea. It’s all dependent on whether or not NVIDIA has their next-generation mobile system-on-a-chip device ready. Or maybe Apple internal engineers have developed their own system-on-a-chip incorporating an optimized AMULET core that’ll offer the power efficiency needed for such a project. Here’s a summary:

1. Apple is actively pursuing a mobile phone, but the limitation is technological. In order to meet the target battery life, it has to be using next-generation system-on-a-chip technology.
   
2. NVIDIA has been working on next-generation system-on-a-chip technology for at least a year, so the time is ripe for a Apple mobile phone announcement.
   
3. If the phone is announced, it’ll have market leading battery life. It will probably use flash instead of a HDD to improve battery life.
   
4. Apple will not have their own independently-branded mobile phone service unless they can pull off the multi-carrier negotiation. With a single-carrier solution, you may have something like “Apple service provided by Cingular” where the service is co-branded with the main carrier.