What’s Your iPhone Strategy? Speculation or Prediction

A few years ago the strategy question for anyone in and around communications was “What’s your Skype strategy?”. Last year just after the Facebook API was launched it was common practice to ask: “What’s your Facebook strategy?“. Today, you need answers to “What’s your iPhone strategy?”.

I’ve got a few friends which I’ve passionately talked the iPHone too and now convinced to go and get iPhones; for the same reason a year ago I said they must get on Facebook. Because it is the right general direction, because you can learn faster earlier and then understand the things that will come next. In a developer sense it is prototyping to the future.

In the last 24 hours my story has become more embellished, more persuasive; not just with a 100 million (1billion cell phones sold per year) as a sales target, or the iFund investment, rather because of the SDK, because Apple is in Silicon Valley, and so are the VC’s. And today to add to my example I heard that Max Levchin of Slide is doubling his development team. That’s not for Facebook. He already reaches 100’s of millions of users per month.

So here’s where you have to be careful. Here’s another reason the iPhone is part of a radically new and emerging P2P social system. I think the P2P aspects are important.Particularly after listening to Michel Bauwens again last night. (He’ll also be at eComm).

Think about Max Levchin and in fact all the entrepreneurs that created Facebook apps. They were there first, they learned what worked and they now have “millions and millions” of people on Facebook. The iPhone is the chance to take them mobile.

Take Slide and all their products. Now bundle them. Now enable a single download of all your favorite and best Facebook apps. Then create a “home button” for each one as it installs. Then become the geo-location proxy. Now you know exactly where people play on facebook. Their favorite facebook widgets are all on iPhone. Scrabbulicious, a native live app. Make it more attractive. Enable people to earn their iPhones. One page ads when each of these apps open. Opps, right to location. Step in for a Pizza here.

So this is how I see the problem or challenge:
iPhone is actually created and surrounded by the most creative talent in the world for enabling social communications. It’s not just a question of can Samsung or Motorola, Nokia etc. generate a touch screen. It’s the fact that the SDK, the developers, and users of PC’s for surfing, browsing etc are the most intensive here. Steve Jobs quotes over 70% of mobile browsing is done by iPhones. This is n times more frequently than on any other phone. The US is ready to take their PC to the phone. I suspect that demand / pent up desire is greater here. If Max Levchin and Mark Zuckerberg can get their cadre of Facebook users and application developer to co-develop for the iPhone then OpenSocial and Android may well be a moot point.

So if you are Facebook… What’s your iPhone strategy? (Voip? Photo dialing? directory?) Couldn’t Facebook now replace my contact list? Could Facebook be that geo proxy? Is it not the people’s directory? Will it buy Skype? See below?

What about eBay? Could they find a strategy and redemption in rethinking Skype and the iPhone? Do they have the capability to deliver by June?

So if you are Nokia? What’s your iPhone strategy? At what price point is their current global strategy re emerging countries at risk? Do they abandon their you need phones like fashion items? Their format view of types and styles? Why have their social communications endeavors (of which there are many) not found traction?

So if you are GM or Ford or BMW? What do you do? You are building a whole lot into cars that is going to be very redundant. Who will be first to strip it all out?

What if you are Truphone? Mobivox? GizmoVoip? Jajah? Can you be involved in the voice activation of Facebook apps moving to iPhone? How do you piggyback on the trends? Where does corporate business opportunities fit in?

Most of the world is still driven by text. I wrote a post (2003) on social networks and voice in 2003. At the time Skype had less than a quarter of a million downloads. I wrote some stuff in that post that brought networking, collaboration, knowledge sharing and simply talking all together with a global scale perspective. This time I think iPhone may actually enable it. Certainly putting it all in our pocket makes it more likely.

So, if you are a VoIP player. Forget about the money model; think about the relationship model, the social model. For your biggest risk is Skype launches as WiFi on the iPhone. If you want to know how eBay solves their problems (ie sell Skype) you sell to Facebook who puts it on iPhone and builds it in to their system. The only value a VoIP player can create in a world of decentralized communications where there is a universal directory and a single platform is “bridging”. That’s where I think Mobivox is interesting and where call around apps are well… doomed with time.

 Then of course… What is Apple’s real iPhone strategy? What is their VoIP strategy? Should they not just buy Skype? Would that be too antagonistic? Too early? Fact is… I don’t think VoIP is interesting to them strategically. They don’t need to control the channel for talking. Their’s is a platform play.

PS:… I am a registered card carrying iPhone developer. Whatever that means!

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