Did you read what I wrote?

Yes, the iPhone is a tremendous achievement by Steve Jobs. But no, it changes very little in the global cell phone market. It may force some of the boutique players, like blackberry and palm and danger to be more aggressive and thougthful in their designs, but this is not a game changing event.

The lack of 3G and Exchange integration more or less guaranteed that.

The iPhone is NOT about competition in the cel phone universe.

It’s about personal empowerment. It’s about software and hardware being put to SERVICE enhancing human communication in a BROAD range of modalities.

Sure other phones do kinda sorta what the iPhone does. Just like a small bunch of other MP3 players kinda sorta did what the iPod did back in the day.

The iPod rose to dominence by making the ENTIRE music listening EXPERIENCE better. That wasn’t just the player, it was the hardware, the software, the look and feel of the interface – everything working in harmony – giving the user – even the NOVICE user the feeling “hey, I can do this and it’s EASY!”

That is PRECISELY what the iPhone does. Everything works. Everything is EASY. Five minutes into the setup and ALL my contact info was there. I made my first call without EVER opening the little instruction booklet. Same for my first text message. My first internet browsing experience and my first content download.

This isn’t about the “cel phone industry.” It’s gonna eventually die because they stupidly look at a modern cel phone as a sales platform for ringtones and flix messages that delight kids, but make their parents crazy when the $600 phone bill arrives.

Apple sees the iPhone for exactly what it is. Superb communications technology in a simple package. One part of which is a cel phone.

By my calculations, Apple/ATT just booked not only the sale of 500-700 THOUSAND phones in three days, but somewhere north of 1.2 BILLION dollars in signed contracts for service – substantial numbers of them, like mine, pulled from another service provider who after 6 years had engendered ZERO loyalty by offering obscure rate plans and caring more about “extending the contract” and locking me into a revenue stream than about enabling me to get more satisfaction/value from my phone use or experience.

Apple just competes better by paying attentention not just to what they make – but how their customers want and need to USE what they make.

So, sorry, but ikf we’re lucky, this will start to change EVERYTHING.

Particularly the utter disregard for the customer that’s been the general hallmark of the current cel phone industry in the past half-decade.