Nonetheless, I am kind of disappointed with my purchase.  It is a neat toy and I am impressed by what it can do.  I am, however, really annoyed by what I can’t do with it.  For one, the firewire cables and docking station I have from my second-gen iPod Classic are not compatible, even though the plugs are the same.  Congratulations, Apple, you have made your product incompatible with a piece of wire.  Further, I can’t sync it with iTunes using the iPhone’s onboard Bluetooth connection.  Clearly, the point of this is to force me to buy additional new cables so I do not have to schlep the one that came with the iPhone with me.  That kind of bundling is to be expected.

However, what really upsets me is the fact that I cannot use my Bluetooth keyboard with the iPhone.  I have a really cool iGo Stowaway folding keyboard, which my wife got me as a present a few years ago.  The keyboard is about passport-sized (about twice as think) and unfolds to a laptop-sized keyboard.  It’s really very handy.  However, the Bluetooth onboard the iPhone does not recognize the device and there are no apps for the keyboard in the App Store.  iGo’s website simply states that it is not compatible with the iPhone.  Obviously, I cannot load the software and drivers which came with the keyboard onto the iPhone and I am terrified that if I try to load a hack, Apple will brick my phone into a 200€ paperweight.

In many ways, my old Nokia N95 was a better, certainly more flexible, smartphone.

Insight:  It is an absurd result that I cannot use a standardized peripheral with my own computing device.  I have been using Apple products since 1982 (Apple II Plus, 32kb), but now, I am not purchasing another Apple product until I can do something as simple as hook-up my own keyboard to it.  In the meantime, there was this gem, via Guy Kawasaki.

T-Mobile recently introduced its G1 mobile phone in Germany, the first to use the open Android platform. The G1 joins the more proprietary iPhone which T-Mobile has sold in Germany under an exclusive agreement with Apple. The G1 is manufactured for T-Mobile by HTC in Taiwan and the Android platform is an open standards effort of the Open Handset Alliance – a consortium comprised of Google and several mobile phone manufacturers and networks. By contrast, the iPhone is a more closed platform where modifications may result in it being rendered inoperable. Given that T-Mobile is embracing open and proprietary strategies for the operating systems, begs questions on the efficacy a hybrid business strategy and whether this is unfair competition.

Both the Apple and Android approaches have had to grapple with the optimal level of openness. No pure strategy is viable: too restrictive, and the phone is of minimal value; too open, and it becomes unprofitable. Originally, the iPhone’s operating system was derided as being overly restrictive. Apple tried to harness the energy of individuals trying to improve the iPhone by launching the App Store in July 2008. It now boasts 15,000 third party applications for sale. At the same time, the Android platform is an open standard, not full open source. The source code carries an Apache license, so some extensions to the code may be proprietary. Further, Android’s Software Development Kit might allow Google to control an Android Market in a way which resembles the App Store.

Insight: It is not necessarily unfair competition for T-Mobile to be the exclusive source for both the G1 and the iPhone in Germany. Despite the 200 patents filed for the iPhone, it is not inherently irreproducible – save its cachet as a technocrati status symbol. Both Samsung’s Instinct and the RIM’s Blackberry Storm have already been launched to compete with the iPhone. Similarly, any other network could market a phone employing the Android platform. Whether these devices are better or worse is a matter of consumer preference. The fact that T-Mobile is now marketing phones based on both open and proprietary software suggests that neither approach is the Holy Grail of business models. T-Mobile initially launched the G1 in the US in order to compete with AT&T which is the exclusive sources for the iPhone there. The decision to sell the G1 in Germany probably embraces economies of scope and scale, more then the question of openness.

A German language version of this note, authored with Christian Wernick, will be published in Wirtschaftsdienst, available at: www.wirtschaftsdienst.eu.