iPhone Price Drop - Serious Competition for Windows Mobile

I'm talking to my Windows Mobile peeps here: the gauntlet has been thrown down and thrown down hard. Everybody's atwitter about the iPod announcements yesterday and here's what I think it means for WM:

First - that iPod Touch, if Apple ever decides to get serious about adding PDA functionality, is serious competition for the non-smartphone PDA market. It's a market that's been shrinking fast (one of the reasons we here at WMExperts basically avoid it altogether) and I foresee it shrinking faster.

Second, and most importantly, I'll let Mike at Phone different have a word here from his "Phone different: 8GB iPhone: $399, Ringtones" article:

Holy smokes! Apple has put a $200 price cut on the 8 GB iPhone, and dropped the 4GB version altogether. That's right, the 8GB iPhone is now $399. Where do I line up for my $200 check? I'm equal parts filled with rage for paying a $200 early adopter fee, and equal parts filled with glee for a $200 price cut. I'm glad that it makes the iPhone that much more accessible for everyone else. I just feel a little sore when I sit, that's all.

Holy smokes indeed. I'd like to crow about how the price drop means the iPhone hasn't been moving as well as Apple hoped, but I don't really think that's the case. Instead, I think that it clearly means that Apple is serious about bare-knuckled fighting in the smartphone space1. I also think it means that we can expect a hardware update to the iPhone sooner than we may have previously expected - mayhap price drop to clear inventory?

In other words, Microsoft knew the iPhone was a threat before, now Apple's made it a big, spiky threat. I know this will ramp up the recent rumors of a Zune Phone, but I'm still of the opinion that Windows Mobile 7 / Photon will feature radically improved media (and browser, pretty please) functionality. Windows Mobile will absorb Zune functionality, not the other way around.

1 Yes, I'll admit it's basically a smartphone, at least it is now that you can hack it to get native apps (opens in new tab). It's no true SDK (opens in new tab), but I suppose it's enough. Yes, that's a turnabout (opens in new tab). No, I don't want any to hear any guff about it.

WC Staff
5 Comments
  • Re:1: Hah! I win yet again. ;)
  • How is Exchange/OWA working on the iPhone? Was reading elsewhere it is still hit or miss. I might actually consider one now, if it can do Exchange well enough (though getting out of my Sprint contract might hurt a little!).
  • I've tried it with 1and1 and it works.. meh. It's just IMAP and I never got the SMTP settings right.
  • Hi Bubbatex,
    Exchange with IMAP works fine. It's not push, as Dieter says. For folks that need access and can't convince admins to enable IMAP, there are some OWA scraping 3rd party softwares available, such as Synchronica.
  • well, I am one of those who can wait for 15 minutes - thanks for the reply.