Why we only cover the iPhone

I’m sometimes asked why the iPhone is the only smartphone whose platform Beatweek covers editorially. Actually, we don’t hear that more than occasionally, as I think most people just instinctively get it, no matter what phone they use. But for those who’ve ever wondered, I’ve put together this nice little circle graph:

And where does this nifty graph come from, you ask? The fact is, even here in 2010, most people who own a cellphone (which is most people) are still using some kind of outdated generic flip-phone with no features. And while many of them have not made any decisions as far as when or under what conditions they’ll acquire their first smartphone, it’s clear that the iPhone is the only current member of the smartphone universe which most of them will even consider when the time comes.

Why? Because leopards don’t change their spots. The BlackBerry has been around for eight years and its manufacturer has never considered usability or straightforwardness to be a priority, and that’s unlikely to change now. The Palm Pre and Google Android platforms have been clearly aimed strictly at uber-geeks, either because those companies are trying to turn back the clock to a time when geeks had control over the direction of the consumer technology universe, or they mistakenly think that their geekphones are aimed at the mainstream; I’m not sure which of those two explanations is sadder, but one of them must be true.

Five years ago, when major companies like Dell with its DJ, Sony with its NW-HD1 (no really, that was the product’s retail name!), and Microsoft with its “Plays For Sure” platform, began their assault on the iPod’s dominance, we declined to initiate coverage of any of them for a clear-cut reason: they were all crap. (Sure enough, they were all discontinued in short order, although Microsoft did later try again with the Zune, which predictably flopped even harder). But with the iPhone’s competitors, the discussion is more complex. It’s not that the BlackBerry or the Pre or the Android are crap, it’s that they’re squarely aimed at the tiny circles depicted above, either by design or by the vendors’ collective misjudgment of the human race. And even after what’s already clear to the rest of us finally becomes clear to those vendors, it would go against their entire corporate philosophies to change tack and in their minds “water down” their over-the-top geek products so as to make them desirable to regular consumers.

As a longtime Mac user, I’m fully aware that single-digit minority platforms sometimes are the ones that matter (even most PC users these days seem willing to acknowledge that the Mac is the superior platform; if anything, Windows users are the equivalent of those folks who are still using generic flip-phones even after they’ve seen what the iPhone can do for them – but that’s a discussion for another time). Whatever your opinion of the other smartphones on the market, the bottom line is that there’s no mainstream interest in any of them outside of the small circles that those vendors have limited themselves to. As we’re a broad-based publication, covering those platforms just wouldn’t make any sense. I’m aware that a few of you reading this are in fact users of those platforms; I’m also aware that there are niche sites out there covering those platforms and I’m told that they do a nice job of it. In contrast, I’m routinely told by Beatweek readers who don’t own a smartphone of any kind that they find our iPhone coverage to be of interest anyway. This merely cements the idea that if and when these folks do turn to a smartphone, the iPhone is the only one they’ll consider, hence why the iPhone gets the big circle in the graph above; with the exception of uber-geeks and uber-luddites, the iPhone is aimed at everyone in between.

I’m not saying that our smartphone coverage policies will never change, but there would have to be significant shifts in the market that go beyond anything as temporary as marketshare or as meaningless as who’s running the most television ads this week. We’re in this for the long term, and we know you are too, and so we hope that the relative handful of you who are using a smartphone other than the iPhone can still enjoy our publication for our music, entertainment, and social media coverage. And as I said at the top, most of you looked at the above graph and didn’t need the subsequent five paragraphs to understand its veracity.

Much thanks,
Bill Palmer
Editor in Chief
Beatweek Magazine