Now that we have a few months of iPhone mania behind us it is worthwhile to consider what Apple’s foray into the mobile space means for Handset manufactures, MNOs and mobile content service and sites.

Manufacturers

In terms of Handset manufactures Apple’s iPhone has stomped them all and made them green with jealousy. In July according to a report from iSuppli, Apple’s iPhone outsold other smartphones during that month and equaled sales of the most popular feature phone, LG’s Chocolate. According to the report, the iPhone outsold every BlackBerry handset, the entire Palm portfolio and any individual Motorola, Nokia, Samsung or other carrier-branded models. This can but leave the manufacturers from Nokia, Motorola and the Koreans to the Windows mobile bunch pensive… Ok take away the famed Apple hype machine.. this is a machine that blows the competition away in terms of features. And most of them could have done the same. So the question is why didn’t they ?

The doubt remains that Apple will be able to maintain such high levels of interest and following. But if they do, well there is going to be a shift to more feature reach machines and machines that surf effortlessly via WiFi for example.

MNOs

It remains to be seen exactly how the relationship between Apple and the MNOs will pan out. Apple seems bent on circum-navigating the MNOs walled garden with the recent announcements that they will sell content via a WiFi version of their iTunes store.

Will the let the MNOs in on the action ? or not ? that is really the question. If Apple breaks that bottle neck what will stop others from offering similar solutions ? This is really a very interesting sector to watch.

Mobile Content and Services

As far as content it looks that for the immediate future Apple has this totally blocked off from the flock of content suppliers. It seems pretty clear that they want to control this aspect very firmly. Maybe over time this will loosen up a bit.

When we talk of the mobile internet though things look good. Basically iPhone ready sites are already starting to pop up here and there. The browsing experience on an iPhone is much better than on most mobile devices except for maybe the large screen Windows mobile ones. This bodes well for sites that offer services, social networking or mcommerce because hopefully the iPhone will bring onto the mobile internet a whole new group of users. What we can hope for is that this too will encourage mobile internet sites to upgrade their sites from simpler WML to more sexy stuff.. and even better to be truly multi-device.

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