VOTE NOW: will the iPhone be a hit or miss?!

[Just want to vote?..then scroll down till you see the blue voting
box, select your answer and hit "vote now". Monday email readers, you
need to click on the title at the top of the post and got to the blog. Otherwise, read on…]

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Apple’s iPhone has already generated  millions of colums inches, and generates 38 700 000 104 000 000 hits when you type it into Google, months before it even comes out. Apple-aholics like me are foaming at the mouth in anticipation.

Seth Godin has come out and said it will be a big hit, predicting it will shift 2 million units in 2007, and more in 2008. Godin suggests he’s being brave in this predicition, but he’s not really; this is actually a very conservative estimate. The Motorolla Razr sold 50 million units in the first 2 years of launch…and iPod unit sales in 2006 were c. 40 million. Apple themselves are forecasting 10 million units for the year to Sept. 2008.

But not everyone is a fan by any means. Laura Ries is a big extension hater, and thinks that people will continue to want specific, separate products for different usage i.e. the future is everyone having a Blackberry, mobile phone and iPod, and not all in one.

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Well, you can probably guess what I think: that it’ll fly off the shelves faster than they can be filled. Forget what is practical/useful…this thing is so damn sexy, I have to have it. Now. Ries refers to the Newton as a previous Apple attempt at a new multi-function gizzmo that failed (on the left), but there is no comparison for me. The Newton was cluncky and ahead of its time. The industrial design genius of Joanathan Ive, and the superbly simple interface make the iPhone a must-have piece of kit.

But what do you think? Let’s vote…click below to say what you think.And in Sep 08 we’ll see who got it right!