iPhone 2.0 Not Meeting Expectations

Apple appears to have made some mistakes with this recent launch of the new 3G iPhone. On top of a poorly operated scarcity marketing strategy as explained by Seth Godin, there has been problems with activations and signs of poor stability. David of 37signals.com describes his unhappy experiences with the new Apple device over the last week.

In summary, the increase in speed using the 3G network has been fantastic, that is when it works. David stated that he feels the phone dropped the 3G network and used the slow EDGE network approximately 80% of the time. The new 2.0 firmware shows signs of sloppy performance with consistent delays and instances where the device freezes for several seconds. David also told the readers of Signal vs. Noise that while the phone is on the 3G network it burns through battery life, causing the user to recharge daily.

I can imagine that the iPhone uses more power than most cell phones, but Apple needs to effectively match that power consumption with the appropriate battery. That is under the assumption that the new iPhone is under powered. Lets just hope for Apple's sake that this is not the case and that their iPhone is using more power than it should be, and in this case they can identify the problem and release a patch to the firmware to fix it.

The Apple iPhone has been on a consistent path to capture not only the majority stake of the US' market share of cell phones, but also on a global level. If they cannot quickly address these issues, they will see a drop off in consumer loyalty.

In Seth's post regarding the 5 principles of a scarcity campaign, Apple could have done a better job at making their customer's feel as if they were actually cared for and many of these issues would not have been as upsetting.