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Today, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) announced that Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) YouTube will be on the iPhone.Yes, that's the kind of thing a PR person likes to handle. How can it not generate buzz?
But is this mostly hype?
I had a chance to talk to Dipanshu Sharma, who is the founder of V-Enable and an expert on wireless, and he thinks it is:
"Apple is trying all kinds of hype pre-launch, to the point that now they are misguiding the consumer. YouTube launched a mobile version of their site last week, which works on pretty much on any handset with a high speed network connection. To run a similar experience on iPhone, the user will have to be at a Wi-Fi zone because the cellular radio that it comes with is 2.5 G (EDGE ~100Kbps), which is very slow for video. If apple is expecting their customers to be sitting at a Wi-Fi Zone and log in to a T-Mobile hotspot at Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) to watch youtube, they are taking to small fraction of early adopters. It's not the mass market that has embraced the simplicity of the iPod. Creating false expectations may prove costly to Apple and its shareholders. I had a Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N80 with Wi-Fi and the only time I used Wi-Fi instead of EDGE was when I wanted to see if Wi-Fi worked. It's too much of a hassle to tell the phone which connection to use."
Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-20-2007 @ 9:56PM
beanspants said...
someone on one of your sister sites computed "very slow" it was around 30 seconds to start playing a couple of megabytes clip. not 30 seconds to fully download, but enough of it to be cached to start playing fairly normally.
that's not that long if you aren't busy, and if you are watching youtube on your phone, you aren't busy.
6-24-2007 @ 2:22PM
raymie said...
"....It's too much of a hassle to tell the phone which connection to use."
well thats why the iphone automatically switches to a wifi connection if it finds one
6-25-2007 @ 12:14PM
Kevin said...
Clearly it's for two reasons:
1) Apple's collaboration with Google means iPhone gets custom apps that show Google ads. Both profit.
2) Majority of iPhone first adopters appear to be young people, especially a lot of teens.
7-12-2007 @ 8:55PM
etchy said...
uhh, beg to differ, I have a wifi enabled P990 and I use it all the time for web browsing, checking blogs and email via wifi. I don't have an unlimited data plan (on a prepaid asian sim card right now and I'm doing overseas roaming often), so free high speed data access is something i take advantage of.
who needs a t-mobile hotspot when you can get free wireless at tons of cafes, bars, stores, etc.
looks to me like you guys are just scraping for reasons to poo-poo on apple.
ps - i think people will be more than willing to wait a few minutes for youtube to load via edge. we're already used to waiting for slow load times on the webpage version... people can load a video while the phone is in their pocket and then view it while they're waiting in line or in the elevator.