Since the 2007 introduction of Apple’s iPhone, the company has sold over 6 million of the wunderkind devices.
Described by some technology pundits as the “Jesus-phone,” the second generation of the touch-screen phone / music player / Internet device will hit store shelves at about the same time as this issue of PLSN.
There are several reasons why this could be the next big hit at LDI and beyond. In the late 1990s, the development of lighting consoles was really hitting its stride. A Big Pig was all the buzz, and a group of Germans were making great strides with a console named, presumably, for their materfamilias. It became more common to build lighting control products on commodity hardware (common PC motherboards) and the next generation of consoles would eventually take advantage of embedded consumer operating systems, reducing the amount of custom code that had to be written each time a new console was designed.
At the same time, mainstream technology companies like Palm, HP, Compaq, and Dell were making handheld PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) widely available. These devices, combined with a fast-growing availability of off-the-shelf wireless networking products, quickly became an obvious platform for environments where hand-held lighting control was advantageous.
The companies who had integrated standard networking technologies into their consoles were the first to benefit from this new market of hand-held devices. By writing lightweight applications for wireless-enabled PDAs, manufacturers had a quick and cheap way of creating wireless focus remotes for their systems.
And best of all, they didn’t have to go through the rigorous process of designing a physical product. Everything was off the shelf.
Almost a decade later, little progress has been made in the way of focus remotes and designer remotes. In fact, with the explosion of various “smart phone” platforms, the short life cycles of each individual product, and the resulting disappearance of stand-alone PDAs, it’s become more difficult to develop a long-lasting product on any system.
That’s where Apple’s iPhone comes in.
While the 2008 revision sees a few major hardware updates (most notably A-GPS location awareness and 3G high-speed networking) the most notable changes are in the underlying software. For the first time on this platform, developers will be allowed to develop applications that run natively (not as web pages) and have access to all of the phone’s capabilities, including its touch-screen and networking features.
Developers have been embargoed from revealing details of even their own offerings up until the release of the new phone and software, but informal discussions with several companies in our industry make it clear that an iPhone as a lighting tool is being considered by many.
While there are certainly a host of possibilities in the future, the first specialized apps we see will probably be fairly simple and application-specific. Wybron, for instance, plans to introduce an intuitive color-picker application that will assist designers and programmers in quickly matching gel-swatch colors to their dual-scroller CXI products.
More advanced applications — including utilities like focus remotes — may take a little longer to make it to market. In some cases, there are more complex issues that have to be addressed, such as writing pieces of code that will speak to proprietary network protocols.
We’re also sure to see a few new widgets that few people have considered, but everyone will love.
Apple has taken a rather novel approach to distributing software written for iPhones. Publishers will only be able to sell and distribute their applications via Apple’s new “App Store,” a part of their iTunes media management software, which every iPod and iPhone owner is already familiar with.
Apple will let anyone sell software on the App Store, giving software developers instant access to an international distribution hub. Apple takes their cut of the proceeds by claiming 30 percent of all sales on the App Store. (The company has said that they will offer complimentary hosting to any software that is offered at no charge to end-users.)
While there are pros and cons to every distribution model, this setup should certainly allow for some interesting offerings from independent developers. With Apple’s full set of developer tools available for a mere $99, we’re bound to see some interesting offerings from as-yet-unknown lighting enthusiasts.
When Apple first released this holy grail of consumer electronics, the company’s CEO (Steve Jobs) predicted that they could sell 10 million iPhones in 2008. With the release of v2.0, industry analysts are now saying that number could be very low. Some have pegged sales as high as 18 million units by the end of the year.
So, while it probably won’t have the impact of media servers or LEDs, I wouldn’t be surprised to see iPhones making a strong showing at the conventions this year.
