Get Ready for iPhone Envy

With the release this week of Sprint’s touch-screen Instinct phone, the head-to-head with Apple’s July 11 launch of the 3G iPhone finally is joined. Sprint’s phone comes in prices $60 less than the new iPhone, and Sprint’s 3G data network is already proven and widespread. We have not used the phone yet, so we can’t speak to its attributes, but it looks close enough to an iPhone to attract those Sprint customers who don’t want to switch to AT&T. It is not clear yet whether Verizon has a direct competitor coming to market yet. Regardless, the release of the 3G iPhone at a very aggressive $199 price point is sending shivers down competitors’ spines. Early indications from consumers is that Apple and AT&T could add millions to their customer base by the time the summer is over.

Does this matter to content providers? Hell, yes! The migration of data access to the mobileplatform has begun.  Yahoo Mail already sees 14 million uniques to its mobiel site, ESPN Mobile often clocks 11 million and the Weather channel 8 million. Dig even deeper and you will see economically important pieces of the Web start to splinter off towards mobile. Nielsen reports that somewhere between 10 and 12 million users access mobile search services every month. Among youth, text messaging is replacing email as the preferred mode of contact. Searcha dn email are cash cows for this industry, and any movement away fromt he Web in some demos represent million and billions in revenues also moving. There is a direct correlation between imporved interfaces adn mobile Web access and use of the mobile Web. Magazines not only need a toe in that water. They need a real strategy for how their brands translate into mobile services.