SVPG

I'm not sure if you're reading Marty Cagan's excellent Silicon Valley Product Group newsletter, but if you're not, you should.

This great article on the iPhone is one example of why. I agree with everything Marty says -- particularly his point about focus groups being useful -- but I'm not sure I agree with his final comment:

I’m not sure about the positioning of this device primarily as a phone. The device is much more than a phone, in fact, I’d rate the fact that it’s a phone (and I consider it the very first truly good phone interface out there) as secondary. The device is much more of a complement to the personal computer. It’s a bit like bringing my Mac with me everywhere I go. Perhaps more importantly, it is also the first mobile device that I can imagine being the only computing device many people have.

It is true that the iPhone is more than a phone, but it needs to be a great phone first and foremost before it's going to win that valuable, and limited, pocket realestate. Personally I cannot imagine having *only* an iPhone -- as good as the keyboard and screen is, I have no doubt I can type faster on my laptop. The laptop is a foot scale device, suitable for foot scale tasks. The iPhone is an inch scale device, suitable for inch scale tasks. Both are important and useful, but both are also different.