It happens with every new product release. After what seems like months of anticipation and hype, a device comes out and people begin thinking about its successor. The iPhone is almost a year old and for the better part of this year, the cell phone and tech industry has been pondering the next version. In the last few years, this window of going from “Wow, this is nice!” to “Okay, what’s the next one gonna be like?” has gotten shorter. Witness the situation with the Sony XPeria X1 handset. There hasn’t even been enough time for someone to drop theirs in the toilet, yet there are people already talking about the leaked photos of the X2 model and talking about what the difference might be.
Turning towards the new iPhone, one has to wonder what’s next for Apple after this. If they are to “get everything right” about this new model next month, will there be anything left to add later? Aside from 3G and new software applications, there’s not a ton coming. This might be where the iPhone ends its run and Google takes off.
Android will succeed because it’s not tied to one specific set of hardware. Once everyone and their sister has a touch screen phone with 3G network capabilities, Apple could find themselves fighting for air with a more expensive, less capable phone. With 4 official members of the Open Handset Alliance making their own flavors of handsets, there stands to be something for everyone. Samsung and LG have gotten sexier with each generation of phones and HTC just keeps stepping their game up more and more. Motorola has well as long as we don’t get an ANDRD RZR device, I’ll be happy.
Will Apple change their revolutionary device to keep up with an onslaught of Android phones coming at them with every shape and design? The beauty behind Android is that there will be scores of models that come out all the time, not just once a year. Further, they’ll be more capable than other handsets on the market. I’ve been saying this for almost 7 months now, but Android will be known for what it does whereas the iPhone is known for how it works and looks. There will be people switching to an Android phone once they see all the things you can do with them. A year from now, I don’t envision people jumping to an iPhone because of something it does over the competition. Let’s be honest here: What does the iPhone do that another phone couldn’t?
So what happens after iPhone 2.0 comes out next month? Are future models just going to be equipped with larger store capacities a la the iPod? Whatever it is that Apple does, will it be enough to stave off Android?
