Why You Do Not Need An iPhone 3G

“Who doesn’t need an iPhone?” I asked that question on LinkedIn last month. It was my way of testing two thing: how do professional networkers think of the popular iPhone 3G, but also to which extent the service LinkedIn Answers is useful to get business questions answered. To start with that last question: during the week that my question was open for answers, I received 24 reactions, most of them very useful. And how did the population of LinkedIn think about the over professional use of the iPhone?

Scott Clark: “None for me thanks. $1900/year is silly.”

Brian Hoyt: “I don’t. I like being able to copy/paste.”

Robbert Baruch: “I don’t. I don’t even need a mobile. It is nice to have though. But WHEN I have a phone, I need one that is practical for my purposes. Beauty comes second.”

Jed Nitzberg: “I was steered away from an iPhone by my tech support guy — he likes the product but said that for me (since I am a heavy email user) that the Blackberry Curve was more functional and practical. He’d had many customers who weren’t happy with trying to do lots of email on the iPhone.”

Peter B. Giblett: “Yes please – it is definitely on my nice to have list – but only when my contract comes to an end.”

Tim Tymchyshyn: “The part of the world that lives on CDMA.”

Rick Alcantara: “Folks who aren’t tech savvy, like pushing annoying little buttons, enjoy regular service outages, prefer work-arounds, must have the Star Trek communicator at hand, and don’t know a widget from a wingnut.”

Deborah Goodwin: “Loved them when they came out but like beauty it faded. It’s also kinda like a Mac and PC thing. I am the proud owner of a Moto Q 9 and it is fabulous!”

Tom Caldwell: “I don’t. I need a qwerty keyboard, good coverage, and great battery life.”

Anne Luttrell: “The fees are ridiculous. I do like the tap screen; however, my usage style doesn’t justify the expense. I also don’t like the Palm Trio. I do like the Blackberry Curve – although some users think its software is lame.”

Reinder Dijkhuis: “I have a perfectly good phone that I only need to recharge every 10-12 days, so no thanks.”

Mario Fante: “It’s a lovely piece of machinery, but I’ll stick with my tried-and-true, lifesaving and virtually indestructable Treo!”

Ivan Cambre: “The IPhone is a nice example of ‘creating a need for something’. I, personaly, will skip this hyped phone.”

Frank van der Vries (MacHouse): “Well, I don’t need one but I want one. It is like stated before: “creating a need.” When you have it in your hand you will use the smart extra’s that are on it. And YES you will use the new AppStore and YES you will browse more with the iPhone than a regular smartphone just because its interface is slick and it just works. (…) We all need an idea like the iPhone, not the iPhone itself.”

I may conclude that many business professionals are much less excited than the real iPhone fans who dominated the media during the launch of the iPhone 3G. All reactions can be found on LinkedIn Answers. By the way: what is your answer to the question “Who doesn’t need an iPhone?”

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4 Responses to “Why You Do Not Need An iPhone 3G”

  1. Mieke Roth Says:

    I use an Ameo and an old fashion nokia 6310i. The later is perfect for just the task it is designed for: calling people or being called. And I only need to recharge it ones every 10 days or so. And since I have a build-in carkit for it, I don’t notice that at all. The Ameo (HTC Advantage) I use for all the other stuff, even navigation (with the free nav4all, which is perfect). It is very much underrated, but it’s a minilaptop with a qwerty keyboard and touchscreen and does its work fine without any fancy stuff. It also has a larger screen. The only advantage of the iphone/ipod touch series is that you can enlarge what you are viewing.

    But there is one major reason why I will not switch: I have always been a pc person just because there is much more software for pc, but I didn’t have any reasons why I wouldn’t have a mac or iphone in the future. That changed when I bought an ipod touch: it thinks for me, and I don’t need that; I can do my own thinking. For example: I want to know where I put my stuff on the machine itself and I want to be able to search for it in more than one way.

    As for my ipod touch: it is just a thing to play with, nothing else.

    Now… if you where able to download movies from itunes in the Netherlands…

  2. Jeroen Mirck » Wat mis jij op mijn blog? Says:

    […] Aanwezig zijn op zo’n beetje alle sociale netwerken is dus een must, net als het bezitten van de hipste smartphone of het downloaden van de meest obscure software (liefst in zo’n crappy beta-versie). […]

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