Cauvin

Now that we have had more than a year to assess the success of Apple's iPhone, let's see how the predictions of the marketing gurus panned out. Laura Ries predicted that Apple would initially sell a lot of iPhones, but that ultimately the product would flop. I think it's safe to say that the iPhone has not flopped. Apple sold four million of them in a recent six month period. Ries has recently revisited her prediction . Seth Godin predicted that the iPhone would be successful, and that Apple would sell more than two million of them in 2007. I suspect he was right about the 2007 sales. From a marketing perspective, the most important observation about the iPhone is that it has not turned out to be so much of a convergence device. While much of Apple's initial marketing touted the iPhone's merging of music, Internet, and phone capabilities, that perception in the mind of the consumer has not taken hold. In fact, 51% of iPhone purchasers say they will use an iP...