The Future Of The iPhone

The recent rumor that a $99 iPhone would be making its way to Wal-Mart set the Internet abuzz last week. That is until the idea was debunked. For the record, Wal-Mart will sell iPhones next year, but the entry-level $199 price isn't expected to change. Nevertheless, it prompted me to seek out some informed speculation about the iPhone's possible future—emphasis on the speculation, given how closely Apple holds its future cards to its vest.

I reached out to Jonathan Steuer, a technology consultant based in New York City. Prior to striking out on his own, Steuer was a vice president and general manager at the consumer-research firm Iconoculture, whose clients ran the gamut from financial services (MasterCard International) to automotive (Ford) to technology (Sony Electronics). He's perhaps best known for founding Hotwired, Wired magazine's Web counterpart—considered the Internet's first banner-ad-supported online magazine at the time of its October 1994 launch—and has also served as a judge for the annual Best of CES competition at the spectacle that is the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. When I asked him about where the iPhone was headed, the first thing he stressed was that part of what has driven the iPhone's early success is that it is constantly evolving, through both hardware (expanded storage and the 3G radio) and software (the operating system upgrades and new programs made available through the Apple App Store). "It becomes so much more functional over time," says Steuer. "As a consumer, most of my tech products get worse over time. This one gets better, which makes it a great value."

While it's true that each revision has improved the iPhone, the physical design has barely changed at all. That's somewhat surprising, for two reasons. First, the iPod's own legacy spans the iPod mini and the iPod nano, two products whose popularity suggests that each is well suited for an iPhone makeover. Second, part of the reason your mobile-phone provider carries so many handsets is because some people like flip phones, some like candy bar phones, some like switchblade phones, and no carrier wants to risk turning you away because they don't have the style of phone that you feel best suits you. So if the iPod line is no longer one size fits all, the same should eventually hold true for the iPhone.

One of the world's most successful clamshell portable devices, at 84 million units sold worldwide, is the Nintendo DS. Steuer thinks that its clamshell design could serve as a model for a flip version of the iPhone, rather than shrinking the device's footprint by putting a hinge in the middle. "The applications can already reposition themselves based on the screen orientation, so that shouldn't be a problem." He also believes that it's possible to do a more conventional candy bar-size iPhone—think iPhone mini—because of high-resolution screen technology that's already been demonstrated at previous CES shows which is good enough to allow spreadsheets to be read clearly on traditional postage-stamp-size LCDs. He does caution, however, that Apple would likely have to scrap the all-screen design in order for this to work. "You might have to have a separate touchpad and screen," he says. "Because if you make the screen a lot smaller, your fingers don't work on it any more."

Shrinking the iPhone is one possibility, but what about making it bigger? That might seem counterintuitive, but it's actually in line with the device's versatility, with many of its fans already using their iPhones in situations where a PC or laptop would previously have been required. Another direction in which Apple could take the iPhone is bigger, says Steuer. "Think of a docking station that you tuck your iPhone into, which has a bigger screen and a full keyboard," Steuer says. If that sound's like Palm's much-maligned-then-mothballed Foleo, you're not mistaken, but he insists that the iPhone has evolved mobile computing to the point where a companion device like this would serve a valid purpose. "People are doing different things at the same time on the iPhone, especially with 3G," he says. "The mobile phone has gone from your third [most important] screen to your first screen because it ties together all of the data in your life. Ubiquity is what makes it your first screen."

The final course of action that Apple could take is also the most logical and therefore most predictable—beefing up the processor and graphics chip at the heart of the iPhone—thereby making an already versatile device that much more useful. "Right now, the photo-editing tools are very weak," says Steuer. "I wish I could tether my iPhone to my [standalone] digital camera—it could be wireless; it doesn't need to be wired—take my pictures, then retouch them on the go." In addition to having his iPhone serve as a mobile digital darkroom, Steuer would also like to lean on its built-in GPS to automatically "geotag" the photos taken on his digital camera so that he has a permanent record of where they were taken.

Which of these features will be Steve Jobs' next "one more thing"? Considering that the iPod mini was introduced more than two years after the original iPod's debut, and that the iPhone itself appeared long after the chattering classes had predicted its existence, trying to forecast exactly where Apple is headed is a challenge. You'll find out Jan. 5 just how close Steuer and I have gotten.