Who doesn't like the iPhone?

By Carl Ford

As I walked the mall this weekend and saw the line at the Apple store to be the next iPhone convert, I began to wonder who is making money--other than Apple--on the iPhone?

The AT&T store was quiet, with a piece of paper saying that, despite the four-foot iPhone display in the window, they had no phones. The iPhone 3G has actually gained prominence within the store with a display and accessories kiosk, but nothing left to sell but the peripherals.

The rest of the displays featured the usual suspects: different Blackberrys, a Treo, a Samsung Blackjack.  AT&T's Tilt and an LG Glide were the closest to the horizontal feel of the iPhone, but nothing in the presentations was designed to excite, just to compare.

At Sprint, its Samsung Instinct is trying to stand toe-to-toe with the iPhone and if you went on the web, you would think that it was competing with "Batman: Dark Knight " as well.

Speaking of "Dark Knight," Verizon has a Nokia "Dark Knight edition" camera phone. For its iPhone competitive strategy, Verizon has the LG Dare. While Verizon is putting all its cards in this basket, it's a good phone as Noah from phonedog.com [1] would tell you. But Verizon's marketing for the LG Dare is off to the side.

Over at Alltel, Chad does not care about smart phones; the story is the magic of circles. Chad and the Verizon guy will be duking it out soon. If I were Chad, I would keep the wizard [2] nearby.

Given all this, I would say there is a chasm that has yet to be crossed in mobility. As Fierce prepares for its 4G virtual event, I have to believe we need more.

As a recovering Bell Head, I like the Sprint/Samsung integration to the network operator, particularly to visual voice mail. While some say voice mail is dead, I think voice mail just needs to be annotated. Social networks are teaching us that the phone no longer has to be a real time experience and voice mail could be the binding between these worlds. 

While many are happy to join the iStore for Apple's iPhone, I think it was telling that the AT&T salesman had downloaded a VoIP dual mode app but did not use it. I expect we are going to have that familiar problem of apps not being seen enough to be used. Competing for prominence on a phone suggests to me also that Google's Android may be brilliant indeed.

Who should love the iPhone at the end of the day? I would say ad agencies. The fact that iPhone added 2 million more users to AT&T's network is going to drive a lot of commercials. And it may be the prominence of apps on the phone is part of the advertising.

Carl Ford is Strategic Advisor and Community Developer for FierceMarkets. His words of wisdom can be found at www.carlford.net [3].