Apple risks losing its way with the iPhone

Apple must avoid turning the iPhone into a commodity

Apple's plans for the iPhone will be pivotal for the company, according to technology author Kevin Maney.

Maney said at the launch of his new book, Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don't, that Apple had taken the mass-market route with the iPod, and had lost its edge and turned the media player into a commodity rather than an aspirational device. The company now risks doing the same with the iPhone, he believes.

"Apple is at a crossroads," Maney told V3.co.uk. "It can go large-scale and lose, or it can stick to a strategy that works."

Maney's theory is that successful products are either highly convenient or offer a superior experience. Companies run into problems when they try to move offerings between the two to get the best of both worlds.

One of the examples he gave was Starbucks, which began as a coffee chain selling expensive coffee and mitigating the cost by successfully selling "the Starbucks experience".

However, the company then created so many branches in the name of convenience that it devalued the brand and caused the company to falter, according to Maney.

Motorola faced similar problems with its Razr handset, which was an extremely popular smartphone but then became mass produced and eclipsed by more advanced hardware.

Maney believes that Apple now faces a choice of going mass-market with the iPhone and risking losing the exclusivity, or keeping the product sufficiently expensive and technologically advanced to fight off the competition.