Good Idea! Now find a better one.

I know I’m contradicting what seems to be the Holy Writ out there right now but so be it. The iPhone is, in no way shape or form, a convergence device.

It does not combine a phone, an iPod and a “revolutionary communications device” into one utopian device.

Ready?

The iPhone is a computer. Just as your desktop computer is a general purpose computer for stationary work, the iPhone is a new type of computer specifically designed for mobility.

And just like your PC, the iPhone does two very important things. It diverges and it enables divergence. Too buzzwordy?

The PC was a new category - it broke out from the room sized mini-computers before it. But more than that, it enabled other companies to create new categories of software: Desktop Publishing, Word Processing, Video Editing.

They just keep getting smaller…

The iPhone breaks out, not from phones or PDA’s or communicators, but from laptops. It creates a new category of portable computer. And it enables new categories of software that couldn’t exist without the iPhone’s hardware as a platform.

What we’re seeing in the iPhone is not the convergence of 3 devices, but the commoditization of those 3 into “software applications”.

Just to make it clear

The iPhone is not a convergence device. It is a divergent device that enables further divergence through software.

Allow me to prove it to you. Let’s go back to the early days of the PC. It’s 1979 and the Apple II is a hobbyist’s toy, great for techies but useless for everyone else.

Enter Dan Bricklin: the man with the problem.

Dan Bricklin was studying for his MBA and was struck by the limitations of a common (paper) spreadsheet. As a professor was giving a lecture, he found an error in a single cell and was forced to change the value in every other cell. Bricklin imagined…a simple interface that would allow him to create spreadsheets that could be corrected and redone on the fly.

The program went on sale in November of 1979 and was a big hit. It retailed for US$100 and sold so well that many dealers started bundling the Apple II with VisiCalc.

The success of VisiCalc turned Apple into a successful company, selling tens of thousands of the pricey 32 KB Apple IIs to businesses that wanted them only for the spreadsheet.

Businesses didn’t want the Apple II, they wanted VisiCalc and they had to buy an Apple II to get it. But now businesses have the Apple II and other players can create whole new categories of software applications to solve other problems.

There’s no convergence here. The concept of a personal computer was a big break from the shared machines that came before. And now, the existence of an installed base of Apple II’s provides the foundation for divergence in software.

And why is that valuable? Innovation in software is much, much, much cheaper than in hardware. Faster iteration, easier testing, easier distribution, lower marginal costs - the list of benefits goes on and on.

People, Software, Hardware

In that order. People use software. Software needs hardware. Without hardware, there is no software and the people disappear. Without software, the hardware does nothing and people won’t buy it.

There is of course, another name for software like VisiCalc that makes new hardware desirable: The Killer App. The application that makes buying the hardware worthwhile.

The Killer App for the iPhone is actually a suite of software. It’s a phone application, a music/video application, and a couple of connectivity apps. It’s exactly like buying a new machine so you can run Microsoft Office. You want the software so you buy the hardware that it runs on.

From Typewriter to Microsoft Word

Most notable about what Apple’s done is that they have switched from a hardware phone device to a software phone application. Remember all those benefits of software over hardware? It all applies to the iPhone’s phone app.

And the release of the SDK brings us back to the Apple II. The Killer App has attracted customers and now there’s an installed base of a divergent, new category of handheld computers. What new problems can we solve by writing software for it?

For further proof of the iPhone’s breakout from laptops, observe the relationship between the iPhone’s OS and software development tools versus the OS and tools for Apple’s Laptops and Desktops.

The same OS and tools are used for both. The only differences spring from the constraints that exist for mobile devices.

What were we thinking?!?

If the iPhone is truly divergent, how did we come to think of it as a convergence device? Simple. We assumed that Apple would call it what it is. They call it an iPhone, so it’s a phone right? And they’re adding stuff to a phone, that’s convergence, right?

The oldest trick in the book

What Apple did is analogous to renaming the Apple II, the VisiCalc or selling a PC called The Microsoft Office Machine. They just named the device after the killer app (or part of the suite - same with the iPod Touch). And boy have we bought it:

Patrick Dubroy thought the iPhone was the “make-or-break test for the theory of convergence” in iPhone is the acid test for convergence.

Matt Rosoff at CNET asked, “The real question: can the iPhone break the convergence rule?”

The TW BrandBlog sees initial sales for the iPhone as proof that, “Apple has grown the market size for smart phones.”

Laura Ries panned it pretty hard, but her analysis is spot on, if the iPhone is a phone and not a computer:

The bottom line is that smartphones are compromised. The phone, email, music and internet functions are very different from one another. One small device doing all of them cannot be better than individual devices doing each of them. It is a fact of life.

With the iPhone, Apple has definitely produced the best, most fantastic smartphone ever. It is a beautiful and elegant piece of hardware with simple well designed software. But it is still a smartphone, a multifunction convergence device.

Hmm…

On your desktop computer or laptop, is having a phone application (Skype), an email application (Mail), a music application (iTunes) and internet functions (Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer) convergence? Because they run on the same machine are they all somehow weakened?

Not at all. Looking at the iPod, Laura gives the reason why:

The iPod is a divergence product. It does one thing extremely well: plays music.

Divergence in Software

Skype is a software based divergence product.
It does one thing extremely well: makes calls.

Mail: manages email.
iTunes: plays music.
Firefox: browses the internet.

(And incidently, Web browsers have enabled whole new categories of divergence through, you got it, webapps)

Each of these applications can focus on the one thing they do well because they have the general purpose hardware to back them up.

Adding these same applications to a phone device, that would be convergence. Building new versions to run on a new category of portable computer: That’s divergence.

What’s in a name?

Notice that other than a cellular radio, nothing about the iPhone’s hardware is specific to a phone. The interface wasn’t designed for a phone. They certainly didn’t need a to create a new version of OSX just to make a phone. They didn’t need a screen that big for a phone.

The same is true for all the other software on the iPhone. None of the hardware is specific to those applications. General purpose hardware, specific purpose applications.

Apple II and VisiCalc.
PC’s and the Microsoft Office Suite.
iPhone and the i’mPortable suite.

This seems familiar

Is the iPhone the first in this category? No. The ultra portable computer has been tried and tried and every attempt has failed.

The iPhone is an attempt to be the first successful ultra portable computer by making 3 changes.

• Creating the most versatile interface for a device that size.
• Eliminate the stylus - annoying and easy to lose. Typing is easier than writing by hand.
• Eliminate the mouse cursor - Why put it on a screen so small?
• A suite of software that together forms a Killer App justifying the hardware purchase.
• Strong software that users really enjoy using.
• Sets new Human Interface standards for portables.
• Deriving the OS from a full Desktop OS.
• Shared development software with Desktop Development.

Windows Mobile has sort-of done the OS thing before, but the software and the interface weren’t strong enough. And most of the devices are more…convergency (Can I say that?)

The OQO brings the Desktop OS directly to the small device but brings the Desktop interface and *ugh* the mouse cursor as well.

There are some linux based “smartphones” that are really computers too, but they lack the killer apps and the interface.

Money to Burn

Apple made a portable computer, called it a phone and sold a million of ‘em. Now Kleiner Perkins is making a $100 million dollar bet, not on cheezy little apps for a phone, but on mobile applications for a new category of computers.

James Cherkoff at Collaborate Marketing saw it:

Steve Jobs…created a whole new product category by calling a computer a phone and thereby making it seem less dorky…Now, the phone which is actually a computer which is actually a new computing platform is actually a marketplace. Stick that in your media convergence pipe and smoke it!

I can’t predict the future but I do like the odds for the category.