∞ iPhone, iPad, iAd destined to fail

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I honestly didn’t know what to think when I looked at this five page missive by Brandt Dainow. The bottom line, which happens to be in the very first paragraph, is that Apple is destined for failure because its iPhone and iPad have no future.

Okay. I still don’t know what to say.

Apple’s new iAd proposition has been generating a great deal of discussion lately, most of it positive, and most of it remarkably short-sighted. It seems most people, including Steve Jobs, have forgotten the basic lessons of computing and the internet. People who forget history are doomed to repeat it. The iAd has no future, and neither does the iPhone/iPad. I will show why iAds must inevitably die, and how Steve Job’s strategy for iPhone and iPad will inevitably lead Apple into becoming at best a marginal niche player, at worst an ex-business.

Why iAds will fail [iMedia Connection]


  • http://www.facebook.com/robbiefriedchicken Rob Thompson

    Cannot say that I agree with the post of the original writer, but if Apple really wanted market domination, they probably would have lowered prices, taken a hit on the profits and would have opened it up to all…but that hasn't been Apple over the years. I cannot say that I believe that Apple want's complete domination….I believe they want to make money (yes…very much so) but quality cannot take the hit that most other companies deal with. I believe that this original opinion, quite frankly, holds no more and (possibly) less than my words.

  • http://www.theuniversalsteve.com SSteve

    Yeah, there's no market and certainly no future for online or mobile ads. Just ask those pathetic failures at Google.

  • http://www.facebook.com/jamesadempsey James Dempsey

    The guy is a bafoon. Comparing Apple's situation in the late 90s to what it is now is just absurd. I agree with the guy that iAds could ultimately end up failing (due simply to the high cost), the guy doesn't appear to have a clue.

  • Adobephile

    We keep hearing these keywords: "Choice", "Openness", "Freedom." And we keep hearing various rants about how Apple is somehow preventing those in various aspects of its business models. But even if those weren't the competition's feeble attempts at propaganda, if they were temporarily taken, for the sake of argument, as facts, they'd be CONTRARY to the much larger and more important FACTS of Apple's sales statistics. Who is twisting anyone's arm at this point or at any other point over the past three-odd years and more to buy Apple's products? And how are any of those individual purchases (in the hundreds of millions–and BILLIONS if you count iTunes songs) NOT the products of CHOICE, OPENNESS, and FREEDOM????

    One of our clients, a staunch hold-out Blackberry user for years now, just yesterday "confessed" to my wife that she wanted an iPhone because she realized the Blackberry's limitations in keeping her from viewing her emails with their graphics attachments, while talking to my wife on the phone. Hers was not grim resignation to being "forced" to buy an iPhone, but real excitement over the prospect of the iPhone being a better tool for her in her business activities.

    This is the true and obviously widespread news of Apple and its iPhone OS products which clearly refutes Brandt Dainow's parroting of his retainers' FUD. He his clearly a shill.

    • http://www.facebook.com/jamesadempsey James Dempsey

      You've hit the nail on the head, and I've been saying the same thing for quite some time. These media outlets, Adobe and a few other developers keep harping on "open" and "choice" – yet conveniently keep leaving out the undeniable fact that people are OPENLY CHOOSING the iPhone, the iPad, the iPod and the Mac… in obnoxiously high numbers.

      To me, that says people don't care about "open" – they care about their hardware and software looking good and working as advertised. Period.

  • http://intensedebate.com/profiles/mlongo Mauricio Longo

    The fellow is clueless. Enough said…

  • Richard

    The future? Dude, the future is now and iPad and iPhone are massively NOT failing. I cannot speak for iAds as they will come about as developers work it into iPhone 4.0 but there is no failure. Seriously, this guy Dainow is smoking crack.

  • Dave Martin

    i’m not sure why people link to this story. DF linked to him a couple days ago. The guy’s just not reliable. In many instances, he has his facts just plain wrong. Never mind that it’s five interminable pages of wrong after wrong after outright misinformation.

    Just dumb. And I think it’s wrong to link to him.

  • Hamranhansenhansen

    He even says MS Office came to the Mac in 1997 as charity, but MS Office has 1) always been profitable for Microsoft, and 2) shipped on the Mac first, in 1989, before anybody even used Windows. Further, Word and Excel were also Mac first, in 1985.

    So he just has no idea what he's talking about. This is part of the hysteria in the PC industry as they realize that the 9 out of 10 people who are not computer nerds are not going to become computer nerds but rather they are going to use consumer computers like iPad which PC nerds don't know how to make and aren't required to fix. The PC doesn't replace the TV after all, the TV just becomes an iPad.

    So we will see many more crazy articles and crazy propaganda from PC people while they struggle to adapt to the PC being just a typewriter again.

  • Steven

    I cannot understand why the Loop would even post this dooms day, make-beleive crap. Give me a break. The writer is obviously a few feet from the psychiatric unit. The "Media Connection" writer.

  • http://twitter.com/DeltaTee @DeltaTee

    While he may get some of the details wrong, and you may disagree with his conclusions, the conclusions are a possibility.

    If you don't understand why this is so, I would suggest checking out the book The Innovators Solution. Basically, when a product is "not good enough", an integrated solution is preferred (iPhone) and once the products are "good enough", the integration of components becomes better (Android). This guy is not the whack job that everyone would like to paint him to be.

  • Mike

    I have iAd running on one of my iphone app and it’s definitely not reliable. The ad will not always show up or should I say most of the time, it won’t show up. I think we’re gettin to a point where the price is too high for buyers and there’s not enough ads to rotate anymore.

    http://www.simpoware.com