There’s been a surreal amount of sniping between the Nokia and Apple fanboy camps since the N97 was demoed in Barcelona this week. Feature-by-feature comparisons turn to personal slanging matches as the relative merits of a real keyboard vs a slim case fade into the background.

But nobody that I’ve seen has fixed on the one single most critical factor that could really make the difference: the data business model. The significant differentiator between iPhone and all other devices is that that it assumes that you can use data and doesn’t repeatedly warn the user that something awful might be about to happen.

A contact at Apple said to me recently “surely Nokia can just take out those irritating messages?” - but I’m not so sure. The operator-driven terror of letting users actually commit acts of internet activity without warning them that it might cost something is deeply ingrained. As is the idea that users might actually understand which data service they need to select.

The N97 has every chance of being a real iPhone competitor if it “comes with data” and Nokia take out all those  irritating messages. With the same old connectivity warnings it’s just another nice bit of engineering with great hidden features.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 at 1:08 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.