Marketing Intelligence by Iain Johnston

OK, so I know it’s no longer trendy, but I too am trialing an iPhone.

In addition to the revolution in location based services which Wadds predicts that it will enable, it has also transformed staple dinner party/conference/random encounter on the train conversation. The harmless chat norm has always been some combination of: “gosh it’s warm, must be global warming”, “how bad can Newcastle/Spurs/(substitute your team here) really get?”, and “the training these Virgin staff get must be brilliant”.

The magical iPhone completely wrecks this hard-won socially acceptable way for two strangers to pass a few minutes. Carry an iPhone, and it’s as if there is a large neon sign flashing above your head “COME AND TALK TO ME ABOUT MY iPHONE”.

I was passing through reception at our market research business Prescient yesterday, and a visitor who happened to arrive at the same time, saw me tapping away on my iPhone, wandered over and engaged me in a conversation I must have had at least ten times in the last few days.

I was of course polite, but wish I could change the neon sign over my head to read:

1. yes I do have an iPhone
2. yes, it’s a lovely design
3. yes, it does need re-charging twice per day
4. agreed, it’s much better since I downloaded the new OS update
5. trust me, the problems you have with two-thumb typing will go away with practice.

Actually this was pretty topical because Prescient do a fair bit of work for a leading mobile phone manufacturer.

Of course until the iPhone came along, Nokia was the king of user interface for phones. I tried Motorola and HTC, and although they were all perfectly logical, they weren’t, well, they just weren’t as intuitive as a Nokia. Now, the iPhone has not just raised the bar, it has transformed my expectations of what user friendly is all about.