iPhone - The Next Big Thing After PC

I am probably a little late on this, on March 6 2008, Apple had a forum on iPhone Software Roadmap, check out the details here.

The coolest thing about this forum is that it stresses about the iPhone being the next big thing after the era of personal computer; made popular by Microsoft.

Here are the highlights...
  • 28% market share for US Smartphone in 8 months.
  • Mobile internet for the first time.
  • Iphone for the enterprise.

    • Great email integration (Built-in Microsoft Exchange & ActiveSync support)
    • Great calendar integration.
    • Great contacts integration.
    • Cisco IPsec VPN integration.
    • Certificates and identities.
    • Enteprise WiFi
    • Enforced security policies
    • Device configuration
    • Remote wipe
The Architecture...
  • Cocoa Touch
  • Media (from Mac OS X)
  • Core Services (from Mac OS X)
  • Core OS (from Mac OS X)
Comprehensive Tools ...
  1. XCode - Development environment

    • Source editor
    • Project management
    • Integrated source control
    • Integrated documentation
    • Debugger (also a remote debugger)

  2. Interface builder
  3. Instruments - performance management.
  4. iPhone Simulator - Emulation
Where do others stand ?

Blackberry, Windows Mobile ?

Blackberry is the pioneer in terms of enterprise mobile devices, making popular the concept of push emails and etc.

Just like iPhone, Blackberry and other Smartphones' platform also offer connection to Internet in myriad of ways.

And they have tools and SDKs as well. Check out the site for Blackberry developers here.

It is pretty grey but I do realize two things about iPhone which differentiates from others.
  • Large touch screen.
  • Native SDK (Third party developers can use it as what the Apple guys do)
Conclusion:
  1. The architecture ; the most advance mobile device platform - for enterprise, games and etc.
  2. Built-in and integration. If you want to built a game for blackberry, you have to do it with Java using Java tools and get stucked within the Java sandbox. If you want to do business apps, you probably want to use Microsoft tools. For iPhone, you just gonna use the same tool (SDK) and you get to access to all the native call.




iFund ...

The biggest highlight of the event is the announcement of a total of USD 100 millions of venture capital fund from the premier venture capitalist in the world Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who responsible for funding of EA (Electronic Arts), Amazon, Google and Friendster (just to name a few).



John Doerr (partners), uttered these words that would probably ignite a big change in the industry, nevermind the charisma of Steve Jobs and great innovation out of Apple.

    New platforms are very rare, but they can be transformational, if it is about great product, with robust APIs, powerful distribution and usually with helps from venture capitalists.

    iPhone and the SDK is about mobile Internet in your pocket; broadband and connected all the time. It is personal, it knows who you are and where you are.

    That is a big deal, it is bigger than the personal computer.

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