From Apple’s new promotional video
Today, Apple released the long-awaited iPhone5.
It looks pretty good, at least on their video.
Expectations are so strong on this one product that JP Morgan forecast that sales of the iPhone5 alone may boost the entire US GDP by as much as $12.8 billion at an annualized rate.
That is a lot of iPhones.
Most media companies are looking at the iPhone as a kind of magic screen that you carry around with you all the time. Â And it is, to some extent. Unlke a laptop which you have to commit take or even sit down in front of, or a TV set (do they still make those?), you have your phone with you pretty much all the time.
Which makes the iPhone really different from anything that has come before it.
Add to this that by 2014 there will be an estimated 2 billion smart phones in circulation around the world and that makes for a pretty powerful platform for content.
So everyone is running around trying to figure out how to get their conent (and their ads) on as many smart phone screens as possible.
This, of course, is what is killing Facebook. Â They have yet to figure out how to generate revenue from an IPhone screen (or a computer screen so far as I can tell, looking at the ads that accompany my page).
I think, though, that the media companies are missing the bigger play here.
I think the iPhone is not just a dumb platform to receive content – I think it is more important, in the long run, as a tool tocreate content.
And from my perspective – create video.
The iPhone, of course, puts a very good HD video camera into 20 billion hands. Â Not to mention the ability to edit and upload all in one.
Up until now the content of most major media companies has been the product of a tiny handful of people in NY or LA for the most part. Media ‘professionals’. And herein lies the problem with news and journalism (for starters). Â Reporting is still done by ‘generalists’ who don’t really know much (or anything) about what they are talking about. Â You might as well just read it in on Wikipedia (which is where most of them get their information from anyway).
The notion that to cover a story for television you have to fly a crew from CNN or Fox News or NBC into someplace accompanied by an ‘on air talent’ is… well, just crazy. Not in a world where there are 2 billion broadcasters (some of whom actually are there, speak the language and know what they are talking about).
We are in the midst of training United Nations operatives (for example) who actually live and work in places like Darfur or South Sudan or Mali. Â They actually know what they are talking about in these hot-spot regions. Â What in the world does a CNN correspondent (and crew) bring to the party – if they can even make the effort to go to the party at all?
Not much
And now, with 2 billion people soon to be equpped with 2 billion HD video studios… well, I think there is potential for a lot of change.
You?
PS. Be sure to get a copy of my new book iPhone Millionaire: Six Weeks To Change Your Life
