The future of mobile User Interfaces and the post iPhone era?

Apple’s iPhone is one of most popular gadgets on the Net right now and recently the company announced they’ve sold one million iPhones in 74 days. Apple did no sell so good because of a really good high-tech device, but because of good marketing and a new, fresh and cool user interface. Today I’m going to discuss user interfaces, why the iPhone has been so successful and what we all can learn studying their marketing strategies.

The iPhone

The iPhone has never been a groundbreaking device looking at the hardware. Apple’s intention was never to create a high-end device, but to take the iPod one step further giving it phone functionality. Apple wanted something extra when introducing the iPhone, and this extra little thing came to be a intuitive user interface. Apple has used this tactics before and it helps them immediately break in to the Apple has sold over 100 million iPod devices the last 6 years, and has today 68% overall market share of all digital music players.

Apple intends to do even better with the iPhone, or as Mr. Jobs once said, Apple is aiming to sell about 10 million iPhones through the end of 2008.

10 million iPhones is not an overoptimistic value, because when it comes to selling cellphones it means ~1% of the global market (which is estimated to 1 000 million cellphones/year). However, when it comes to selling digital music players, 10 million devices is a lot as the total market is somewhere around 100-150 million devices.

Digital music players 100 - 150 million devices sold/year.	Cellphones 1 000 million devices sold/year

Now, what does all these figures tell us? Simply Simple. Apple’s intends to secure the future of the iPod’s by breaking into a new and much bigger market - the cellphone market (partly because Apple knows digital music players will be built-in extras in other devices in the future). Apple is also intending to lower the price for coming generations of iPhones or make a new trend. How do I know?

In order to sell 10 million devices the iPhone must either

• be a cellphone priced under $300

  cellphones priced above $300 account for only ~5% of the global market. Apple needs a broader consumer group. Also, they have a history of dropping prices as competition arrives.

• make a new cellphone trend starting in US and continue to Europe

  the Apple people have been into trends for quite some time. One of their main strategies with the iPod was to reach a younger audience and introduce their products. Apple believes iPod users are more likely to buy a Macintosh computer and that the iPod is a great door-opener for new loyal customers.

Steve Jobs presenting the Apple iPhone

This is where their new GUI (graphical user interface) comes in. The people at Apple used multi-touch technology together with a 3-axis accelerometer, aka a tilt sensor to make the need for buttons obsolete, increase the “cool factor” and create iPhone’s trademark. The user interface featured visual effects such as horizontally sliding, sub-selections and co-selections from right and left and vertically sliding system menus from the bottom (e.g. favorites, keyboard). The tilt sensor is used to flip the image to horizontal mode when flipping the phone itself.All together iPhone users had a new, intuitive, fun and never before seen GUI. Steve Jobs even stated the iPhone was 5 years ahead of all other similar devices, which obviously was a lie unless he was only talking about the GUI. At the same time, most cellphone manufacturers were still discussing whether or not to use QWERTY-keyboards.

Why I blabber so much about the iPhone and Apple?

Apple has introduced the multi-touch screen technology as well as a much more intuitive user interface to the cellphone market. The iPhone will have a catalyst-like effect for the cellphone market. Giants such as Nokia will have to adjust their product lines and user interfaces accordingly. Sony Ericsson and their Walkman series will likely fall the hardest if Apple’s strategy works.

The Strategy

Apple knows its users. They know people want easy to use technology built for humans, not technicians. They know the importance of the “cool factor” and numerous researches on the iPod have taught Apple that people rarely use other functions such as a video player or a GPS. When people buy a music player they use it to listen to music. When they buy a phone, they use it to make calls and send texts. Most users use extra functionality as little as 10% of the time. Thus, Apple do not want to build an expensive portable computer aimed to satisfy high end users. They want a decent product for everybody, kids, adults, your dad or perhaps your grandma. This would include a pretty good camera, a nice web browser environment, good texts and e-mail functionality, a good digital music player, a cool interface, file-synchronization with Mac’s and PC’s, easy to use and long lasting batteries.

“The user-friendly wars”

The cellphone manufacturers are now all looking into how they can use multi-touch screens in their coming devices. Symbian and others are looking in to how the OS can collaborate with multi-touch-screens. Symbian UIQ already supports this (correct me if i’m wrong?). This is likely where the direction of the battle (Apple vs. traditional mobile developers) will be decided. The end-result will be an even more thougher mobile market, forcing some of the company’s down to their knees and probably a few more merging groups.

This is exactly the opposite of Nokia’s strategy. Nokia’s introduced
the N95 as a mobile computer and has continued to do so with the coming
N-series devices, N81 N95 US, and N95 8Gb. Nokia will likely continue
to develop the N-series and profile the product line as gaming and
mobile computer devices with the latest technology. Nevertheless, I
believe Nokia will introduce a multi-touch device before Q2 2008 with
functionality and design very much like the yet to come European 3G
iPhone.

 

Examples and concepts

This video shows how Dasher, a clever text entry program works. Now imagine using a tilt sensor in your phone instead of that red ball? You could write texts without pushing buttons! Just tip the phone in different directions and voila!

Concept animation of how Nokia phones could develop in the future.

Perceptive Pixel, Inc. was founded by Jeff Han in 2006 as a spin off of the NYU Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences to develop and market the most advanced multi-touch system in the world.

HTC’s touch user interface.

Another concept animation on how Nokia phones could develop in the future

Apple’s Q3 2006 report

Time Magazine: Apple’s New Calling: The iPhone