Dave at MobileCrunch dug up an interesting comment by his Steve-ness about the iPhone being the third leg in the Apple chair, next to iPod and Mac. During the internal Jobs-note, however, an employee asked if the iPhone would cannibalize the iPod, to which Jobs responded that he’d rather see Apple cannibalize it’s own gear rather than someone else.
So, as Dave points out, that chair is going to have only two legs, if all goes according plan. The resulting chair, it seems, will really suck. Man. These metaphors are trippy.
Free iPhone? [MobileCrunch]
Third leg huh…
iPhone will take some iPod sales, but not a huge number. It was deliberately designed with too little storage to do that, although I think Apple will compensate by offering streaming music services from iTunes to replace the need for a big disk. But that will also have a different pricing model, so it will appeal to a different kind of consumer.
The iPhone has a small footprint and elegant design for a hand held computer, but is still a little on the large side for the iPod market, and even the cell phone market.
There will be three strong legs, minimally, and if the iTV experiment gathers steam over the next 18 months, maybe a short 4th one.
See: http://thewaythingsare.typepad.com/antimarketer/2007/06/what-is-steve-j.html for what Steve Jobs / Apple is really up to with its deflection strategy.