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I’m not going to talk about the pros and cons of Apple iPhone (well, maybe I’ll do, but  just a little).
Everybody is talking about it. Everybody with a little knowledge of what pdas can deliver knows that iPhone is the sexiest device on Earth, but not the smartest. Tech forums often compare Nokia n95 to Apple iPhone and the result always is: n95 is the real new thing, but Apple masters marketing  and design magic and it’s definitely the trend setter.
All this said, I prefer to look at it in a different way. I see Apple’s move as a smart way to keep growing when the mp3-phone-player tsunami is coming to clean away their nice niche. I don’t think we will have to wait long to see the washing machines on the market capable of playing mp3 and YouTube videos. It’s clear tha the iPod – Apple’s cash cow – cannot be milked forever. So they had to move forward. They had to do it quick: that’s why iPhones have this little hitch with the battery duration (it drains faster than a Rum bottle at a party of exchange students) and they lack of a very little thing for a third-generation phone: a third-generation communication system (i.e. umts)! It will come, sooner or later. But still it’s not there and this is very disappointing.
Anyhow, timing, design and marketing of the iPhone were just great. The idea to grab “only” 1% of the global market looked also great, at least it kept happy the investors. But, this time Apple is not dwelling in his own niche. Apple is trying to steal it from other players like Nokia, Motorola and Samsung. I work for a finnish company, so I must admit that I like Nokia products. What I like the most is the ability of Nokia to adapt to the ever changing market. Nokia is now selling 6 out of 10 phones sold worldwide. It’s competing on every segment, manufacturing phones for the rich western countries and for the emerging markets as well (which are extremely important: Motorola is said to have lost the 2nd place to Samsung due to its inability to compete on the emerging markets).
So the question is: will Nokia let Apple eat out the richest and most profitable segment?
A first hint of future Nokia strategy appeared already in February: “the iPhone will stimulate the market“. The idea is that Apple, with its marketing power, will change people’s mind and show the benefit of multipurpose phones. After all the iPhone is no big deal. It’s just a computer with Unix-like software running on a Samsung processor. It should not be difficult to replicate it and offer it at cheaper prices. It could also be a nice way to penetrate the US market where Nokia is not very strong.
Today the big news (even though it was partly revealed at the beginning of the month): Nokia will go on Internet! Apple biggest success was to get extremely high returns from the supply contract signed with AT&T in the US and the new contracts signed or about to be signed with European operators. Nokia will start doing a similar trick, but this time offering directly a number of services (gathered in a single portal called Ovi – gate in Finnish) specifically designed for their phones but accessible also from the regular PCs. After a couple of acquisitions, Nokia is now ready to start-up its own iTunes, but with some interesting differences: in my opinion the most important one is that mp3 will be delivered directly to the phone – no need of PC software to download from the website and upload to the device as for the iPhone. Nokia wants also to fire-up a new social network, they will make available the nGage concept for all the new n-Series phones and will extend the free-maps service to all new models with built-in or bluetooth GPS receiver.
All this will happen in the fourth quarter of 2007, right before Xmas. They also presented a bunch of new models with 8GB flash disk and better design (even though Apple’s one remains unrivaled) and they showed a kind of exact copy of the iPhone which will be available beginning of 2008. The phone is so close to the iPhone that it really looked more like a message to Apple like “hey! Is this all you can do?”.
So, Nokia is fighting back, in the way Apple would do. Who will be the winner? And, will Samsung and Motorola sit and wait the end of the game? One thing we can take for granted: Apple is not anymore alone trying to milk a rich niche of consumers.