When Steve Jobs first announced the iPhone at Macworld in 2007, he put a major emphasis on how the iPhone, being mostly software, could so easily be modified. He used the example of adding keyboard keys and how Apple wouldn’t need to reship their product in order to change the keyboard. However, now that iPhone 3G has rolled around, along with the 2.0 software, it sort of has me wondering if the strong role software plays in the iPhone will hurt the iPhone 3G sales. Jump to after the break to find out why.
The iPhone 3G brings very minor hardware upgrades compared to the software upgrades. The most obvious of the hardware upgrades being 3G, finding that sort of network in anywhere but large cities is nearly impossible. The second large hardware upgrade is GPS, but we don’t even know if Apple is able to add turn by turn navigation to that due to the iPhone’s small GPS antenna.
What does all of this mean? If you own a first gen iPhone, don’t live in a large city, and don’t care about GPS, the software aspect of the new iPhone (which is obviously available on first gen phones) is all you need. And that is the reason why the strong emphasis on software may hurt the iPhone 3G sales. With such minor hardware upgrades (for most), there is no reason to buy a new iPhone when you can get all the great software updates for free. What do you think? Will you be getting the new iPhone either way?
I'm getting one because I want a 16G model. 8G is too small to hold a decent amount of my music, video & apps.