Monday Note

The end of iPhone/iPad One Size Fits All, that is. So far, Apple has managed to sell more than 300M iOS devices using only a single size for the iPhone and another for the iPad. I’m becoming convinced this can’t last much longer. Soon, I believe, we’ll see a range of physically distinct iPhone and iPad models.

I’m coming to this conclusion from three angles.

Let me start with an analogy by anecdote. It’s 1974, I’m sitting across the street from Burberry’s Haymarket emporium in London watching a gaggle of tourists come out of the store, each wearing the same dark blue raincoat and distinctive Burberry scarf. Once an icon of British gentility (as perceived by non-Brits), the commissariat of trench coats, scarves, and other country squire accoutrements, Burberry had lost their cachet by sticking to a taste-numbing repetition. The company that had invented a true 20th century oxymoron — the mass-marketing of exclusivity – had lost the plot.

Louis Vuitton, on the other hand, is the epitome of the oxymoron. Vuitton stays on top of its game by ceaselessly coming up with product permutations that combine the differentiation customers need without losing the brand identity they crave.

For the past three weeks I’ve been traveling in the US, France, and Spain. In Spain, particularly, I was struck by the number of iPhones I saw in street cafés, airport lounges, hotels, and restaurants. One high-end eatery in Palma de Mallorca equips its waiters with iPod Touches on which they show pictures of dishes to patrons and, with a tap, take their orders. I’m generally careful about drawing conclusions from such anecdotal samplings –they might not be representative of a broader reality — but when I returned to the Valley, I heard a Marketplace® story (audio and transcript) that confirmed my observation: Spaniards are so taken with their iPhones that they’d rather cut other expenses amid the severe economic crisis than go without this indispensable component of their identity.

How long before customers look left, look right, see everyone with the same phone or tablet and start itching for something different? My friend Peter Yared contends that the trend has already started in the UK where the “18-25 class” now favors the smorgasbord of Samsung devices as a relief from the iPhone uniform.

And, lest we think this preoccupation with fashion identity is beneath Apple’s Olympian taste, a look at the shelves of Cupertino’s Hypergalactic Company Store will bring us back to Earth:

We can argue that one-size-fits-all simplicity has served Apple well. I hear one European retail magnate deplore Apple’s inflexible (he actually said ‘‘totalitarian’’) policies even as he marvels at the low number of SKUs (distinct product references) that have produced Apple’s monstrous revenue. (A connoisseur, he also envies Apple stores where, as he put it, the cash register follows the customer.)

But Apple has long ceased to be marginal, on the brink of disaster, imprudently challenging established giants. Apple has become a dominant brand whose rise to ubiquity now requires a differentiation it didn’t need in pre-iOS years.

For the iPhone, how will differentiation manifest itself without veering into capricious, superficial variation?

Screen size? We know the key argument against a significantly bigger screen: Our thumb needs to reach across the entire surface for one-hand operation, a requirement widely held as non-negotiable. As for a smaller screen, the loss of functionality, app compatibility trouble, and touch-UI difficulties make “downsizing” improbable.

Shape? The elegant iPhone 4/4S industrial design is by no means obsolete. I personally consider it a classic, more so than the earlier, less innovative design. Still, alternatives will expand the iPhone’s appeal, communicate newness and differentiation.

Another angle concerns the iPad. Unit sales are climbing faster than the iPhone and sameness is — or soon will be — an issue. There’s an “obvious” solution: Our old friend, the rumored 7” tablet (measured on the diagonal).

In an August 2009 Monday Note discussing Apple tablet gossip, I went so far as to measure the width of men’s jacket pockets (5.5” to 6”, typically) and concluded that a 7” (diagonal) tablet would be nice. But I’m prejudiced, I like small computers. I loved my Toshiba Libretto and yearned for a similarly-sized MacBook. I’d given up on the prospect of a “MacBook Nano,” but I still had hopes for a pocketable tablet.

Wiser minds prevailed and we got the 9.7” iPad.

Still, the yearning for a smaller tablet wouldn’t die. In October 2010, when queried about a smaller iPad during the Q4 earnings conference call Q&A, Steve Jobs famously dismissed the idea, saying “7-inch tablets should come with sandpaper so users can file down their fingers.” Behold the nerve — and the lack of same in the audience! No one thought of asking about the iPhone’s even smaller screen.

Seriously, what Jobs probably meant was that a simple reduction in the size of the tablet screen would mean a proportional diminution of the size of UI elements, a brute force solution Apple had avoided by allowing – and encouraging — device-specific resources. (As we know now, no one really uses iPhone apps in 2X mode on an iPad.)

Also, we ought to remember notable Jobsian ‘‘statements of misdirection’’: No video on the iPod; No body reads anymore (pre-iPad). And the vintage 2007  category winner: No native apps on the iPhone, use Web 2.0 technology!

When thinking about the insistent 7” iPad rumors, I start to worry that iOS developers will have to write or adapt their apps to a third target, the “iPad Nano”. (Don’t hold me to that monicker, I was sure the latest iPad would be called iPad HD, for its high definition Retina screen…) But when I consider the foreseeable volume for a smaller iPad, I become a bit more optimistic: Would multiples of 10M units sold in the first year induce a developer to invest in a new version? Very likely, yes.

Even more encouraging is this clever twist unearthed by A.T. Faust III in a March 21st blog post. If you shrink the original 9.7”, 1024×768 iPad display to a 7.8” diagonal screen, you end up with a 163 ppi (pixels per inch) display, higher than the original, lower than the new iPad (264 ppi), and exactly half the iPhone 4/4S (326). Most relevant, according to A.T Faust, 163 ppi is the exact pixel density of the first iPhone…which means that app developers won’t necessarily have to retool everything in their UI libraries. And the hypothetical 7” iPad would easily fit in a 5.5” -wide jacket pocket:

Lastly, there’s another reason for Apple to forget the sandpaper and, instead, throw sand into Amazon’s and Google’s (purported) 7” tablet gears. From the very beginning of the iPad and its surprising low $499 entry price, it’s been clear that Apple wants to conquer the tablet market and maintain an iPod-like share for the iPad. Now that Apple has become The Man, the company might have to adopt the Not A Single Crack In The Wall strategy used by the previous occupant of the hightech throne.

—JLG@mondaynote.com

While we wait, futilely perhaps, I’ve decided to do a bit of field research and bought a Samsung ‘‘phablet’’, the Galaxy Note, this after giving my 7” Kindle Fire to one of our children. The Note’s screen is a mere 5”, an attempt to combine a phone and a tablet — with an “unmentionable” stylus. I’ll report back in a few weeks.

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