iPhone vs. LG Prada, Ruckus vs. iTunes

While the Apple iPhone is getting a lot of attention, the LG Prada might be a better alternative. Did Apple steal the iPhone concept from Philips?

Shortly after the Apple iPhone was announced, LG electronics, the largest Korean Electronics Manufacturer, announced the Prada which on spec is better than the iPhone and will show up about 4 months sooner and will be more widely available in Europe.

In addition I just became aware of a competing service to iTunes that’s growing like wildfire in schools: Ruckus. With an advertising based model for listening to music off of PCs, and a subscription that allows you to put music on your non-iPod music player, Ruckus costs a reasonable $5 a month for unlimited tracks. Growth is apparently near vertical and from what I’m told; iTunes isn’t even competing for this opportunity.

Finally, right after the iPhone launched there was an iPhone emulator released for the Palm based Treo but Apple’s legal team killed it on a lot of servers. Another programmer created one for the Microsoft Mobile platform and it too was removed after challenge. Given that Apple copied Xerox (another good reference site) and swiped the name for the phone itself we probably should chat a bit about the irony of this and point out that on the web, euthanizing an idea can be incredibly difficult.

iPhone vs. LG Prada

Let’s go down the spec list as we understand it. Both phones have touch screens, both phones have powerful brands (Prada is very powerful in Europe), both phones are 2.5G GSM GPRS EDGE phones and both phones will be on the market this year. I can’t resist saying that the Prada name was legally acquired.

Now realize that for the first half of the year there is only one, the Prada and it’s only in Europe for now. If you are on Cingular (now AT&T) or move to Cingular, you can get the iPhone; the Prada is sold unlocked and so should work with any GSM carrier including Cingular, but without a subsidy it costs more out-of-pocket since no plan is attached.

Both phones are so expensive that I think most of us will forgo the pleasure of this kind of phone for now but prices should drop.

I’d still give the Prada the edge because it doesn’t lock you to Cingular, comes from a company who actually has done phones before, has a removable battery and upgradable memory, and comes to market months ahead of its competitor.

Finally, the iPod came to market as a unique product line that remained largely differentiated through most of its life. Thanks to the Prada phone the iPhone isn’t even unique now and because of the power of the carriers, most of which aren’t Cingular, has a massive uphill battle that the iPod didn’t enjoy.

So while the comparison is kind of fun, the real problem the Prada represents for Apple is it showcases that the cell phone industry is much more capable of running against the iPhone than the MP3 player industry was capable of running against the iPod. More importantly, by creating the iPhone, Apple itself started the move from MP3 players to phones for media and may not be the best positioned to benefit from that move.

Ruckus vs. iTunes

Like any dominant product, iTunes (which is near break even for Apple) is at risk from companies that specifically target smaller audiences. Apple lost education with regard to PCs back in the 90s for much the same reason they lost most corporations – an inability to focus on it and products that largely weren’t competitive.

Now they appear to be facing a similar trend with iTunes and Ruckus is moving around them by focusing on addressing the fears that education institutions have with regard to being held liable for student piracy. By providing a legal way for students to get music for free, the institutions can better argue they are moving against piracy and when they block student access to sites known for piracy, can provide legal alternatives (reducing the desire to work around the defenses).

Ruckus uses the most widely licensed Microsoft DRM and while students could burn CDs and then rip them to their iPods, they can more easily directly transfer them to products that use this same DRM which is virtually any other player than the iPod.

As these students leave school, much like it was for the Mac, they are more likely to not want to support Apple and if Ruckus continues to expand, that represents a long term downward trend to both iTunes and the iPod unless Apple moves directly to provide a similar service and address the need that Ruckus is addressing.

Granted this will take several years to develop and probably won’t become pronounced until 2009 or later but this is how a monopoly is typically taken down, by eating away at the fringes and, in this case, drilling holes in the future market by attacking successfully young consumers.

Death to IPhone Clones: Did Apple Clone Philips?

One of the interesting things that didn’t get much coverage was that (given most of the smart phones already on the market have touch screens and will allow you to install 3rd party software) it was only a matter of hours after the iPhone launched that several programmers had released iPhone clone software that would turn a Treo Palm based or Microsoft Mobile based smart phone into something that looked a lot like the iPhone.

Apple’s legal team sent out this note to those that did the emulators and most now are much harder to find. However in thinking about prior art, one of the defenses in situations like this is past design concepts and I couldn’t help but go back to 1998 when Philips appears to have come up with the idea for the iPhone.

Take a look at these pictures of Philips prototypes and ask yourself, did Apple do the Xerox PARC thing again and simply swipe an idea from a company unable to bring it to market themselves?

All of the phones had touch screens, and the most advanced had a roll up color screen allowing a phone with a large screen to fit into your pocket. In another phone, the screen folded in half, once again providing for a much smaller device with a much bigger screen.

This phone folds open to reveal a large screen

The screen folds open to give you plenty of viewing real-estate

Now do recall this was 1998 and all and the roll-up phones were larger than the iPhone but they also were based around the idea of voice command in addition to touch screen and most had build in cameras pointing at the user for video conferencing.

This phone concept was designed for teleconferencing and business purposes

Note that this was long before the iPod or iTunes so these are much more focused on productivity and communications. Also note that one of the most advanced concepts was an AI Concierge who would respond to your every need through a human-like avatar. In many ways, given the technology of the time, the Philips ideas were ahead of the iPhone a decade before it will arrive.

This phone concept uses an AI based avatar to answer your questions

So is the iPhone Apple 2007 – Philips 1998? Look at the pictures and you decide.