I remember some years ago the CTO of Vodafone telling me how much market info he got from his 6 year old daughter. My own daughter is a bit older than 6 (well that’s how old my grandson is!) but I can still learn.
Here was me being excited about Apple’s iCloud (See iCloud sounds death knell of the PC?) but my daughter’s excitement was all about iMessage which I completely overlooked in my report.
One of the reasons why the Blackberry was so popular amongst ‘young people’ was its ‘free’ Blackberry Messenger (BBM) service. Basically you could exchange an infinite number of IMs (or texts) with other Blackberry users for nothing. Now Apple has introduced a similar ‘free’ service – iMessage – for Apple users. Heavy text users (like my daughter) can save a lot of money – particularly as they are an ‘Apple-only’ family.
This new Apple feature just adds to RIM’s woes. The FT today – App developers caught in iCloud storm – highlights similar consternation amongst Apple’s army of App developers. On Monday Apple introduced some 250 new features. For example the new ‘free’ Reading List feature is a direct competitor to Instapaper. Many of Apple’s new camera features compete with Apps like Camera+.
It’s a tough, fast moving world.