by|JimEJr

the apportunities of the iphone 3Gs & 3.0 os

there…the keynote for apple’s wwdc ‘09 has finally come and gone. i think a lot of apple mac and iphone fans were about to wet their pants in pent-up anticipation for confirmation of rumored enhancements to both platforms…phew!

while the realities of what is coming for the new iphone 3g[s] fell short of some expectations (no new colors, no zoom, no camera flash, and no front-facing camera), it does have a lot of cool new features that will continue its innovative lead over most other mobile devices.

what’s really wild though are the numerous new features that every iphone and ipod touch (with some limitations on the touches) will be instantly enhanced with as their owners update to the new 3.0 operating system available next wednesday.

the apportunities are enormous! gargantuan even! am i hyping it up too much? not a chance! three of the enhancements are most disrupting to a number of markets… good for apple, developers and consumers – very bad for competitors.

1. accessory communications — through both wired and wireless means using bluetooth, the iphone and bluetooth-enabled ipod touches will be able to communicate with virtually any electronic device. sensors, vending machines, cash registers, home appliances, industrial machinery, toys and much more can be controlled by, configured with, or provide status info to apple’s family of mobile devices. if there’s over fifty thousand apps now just to control two devices, multiply that by all the tv’s, hvac systems, servers, hospital equipment, microwaves, car washes, vending machines, parking meters, toll booths, self-check-out lanes and more that exist. how does fifty million apps sound?
2. in-app purchasing — the ability to buy digital content, such as e-magazines, game expansion packs, and live video feeds of sporting events from within an app will accomplish three goals: a) give consumers access to more content that previously was unavailable as no commerce system existed to appropriately compensate content producers/owners, b) provide incentive and financial resources to content creators to…well…keep on creating, and c) fatten apple’s wallet giving them greater ability to accelerate hardware and software development to make even better products available to us consumers. but, the real golden nugget is the ability to now also buy non-digital content… you know, real world stuff. take the first point, accessory communications, and combine it with in-app purchasing… imagine the result. i’ll just leave it at this… for many years, visa, verisign and other companies have tried perfecting for widespread adoption the ability to pay for items using a cell phone and near field communications — i think apple just figured out how to do it…right.
3. peer-to-peer communications — mesh computing at its finest will be possible with os 3.0. every iphone and bluetooth-enabled ipod touch will be able to communicate with each other to allow for multiplayer games, data sharing and group collaboration never before possible and without the presence of either a cell connection or wi-fi network.

there are many more great enhancements coming next wednesday, including innovative cut/copy/paste, three types of app activity/status notifications, and google maps integration in any app. the literally hundreds of new features will greatly propel apple’s devices light years ahead of the competition.

but, there is a downside… oh it is going to be so much more difficult for developers to get their apps noticed, to differentiate from the noise. it’s also going to mean that users are going to be expecting more and with greater quality. excellent app design, testing, marketing and revising will be crucial to take advantage of the apportunities.