The Apple iPhone enters a mature mobile phone market. It has great potential, will grow and change, but it won’t have the same impact as the iPod did in a relatively new market. That may not even matter, according to Rediff’s India Abroad.

Everyone is talking about the Apple iPhone now. It’s a credit to Apple’s marketing style. But the real question is how the iPhone fits in to the market, how it can compete, and whether it will ever become as big a hit as the venerable iPod. Even if it doesn’t, the iPhone will have a major impact on the industry.

Last month, Apple reported sales of 10.5 million iPods for the quarter and 78 percent market share. That momentum is derived from Apple doing it all right the first time, according to Chris Breen of Macworld. It was a market in which players were hard to use and were storage poor. Apple optimized the user experience for the whole market place.

Moreover, the iPod is very cool, and people want cool things. So the question now for everyone is, how all those elements will come into play for the iPhone.

"Speculation is now running rampant as to whether the iPhone will be to the mobile phone market what the iPod is to the digital music market. Apple has indicated an intention to take 1 percent of the world market for cell phones, or 10 million phones per year, by the end of 2008. The company may actually do better than that," Saabira Chaudhuri wrote. "The latest USA-based ChangeWave consumer cell phone survey, which polled 2,640 users, indicates that if the phone lives up to expectations, Apple is likely to exceed its 2008 goals. In fact, the survey indicates that the iPhone could alter the face of the cell phone industry dramatically."

Even so, if the Apple iPhone doesn’t dominate the mobile phone market in sales, what will be the effect of its design on the competition? And are customers interested in what the iPhone has to offer for its price? "What the iPhone potentially does promise is to make the features that most people don’t use on their phones -- web browsing, more advanced kinds of messaging, email, music playback, etc -- far easier to use," Mr. Breen said.

In addition to all that, there’s the question of customer preferences for a single device versus having best-of-breed devices. "According to Steve Koenig, senior manager for Industry Analysis at the Consumer Electronics Association, research indicates that in spite of the ’new convergence’ among consumer electronics, strong counter trends to consolidation do exist," Mr. Chaudhuri noted. "Many users continue to prefer stand alone devices that perform their designated function as simply and effectively as possible, others may simply shy away from the idea of having one master device that could get lost or broken."

Like any company, Apple will have to sort out these issues over time. Other companies will also react to the features introduced by Apple, and that will alter the competitive landscape. However, Apple’s focus on simplicity is likely to go over well. The article’s conclusion is both simple and insightful: "For an increasing number of consumers, less has never been more than it is today: the smaller the better, the sleeker the better, the simpler the better, and the more consolidated the better. The iPhone is likely to emerge as a forerunner in this movement towards simplifying the digital media industry."