The Cool Factor

Brian Deagon for Investors.com:

One week ago, I ignited a firestorm among AppleAAPL fanatics by claiming the company would “lose its cool factor” in 2012.

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Reader comments on the blog posts weren’t as nice. The rousing Apple fan boys on sites like BGR.com said I was on drugs and a moron.

Maybe they came after you for using terms like “fan boys” to describe them?

The critics often pointed to my line about the iPhone being “boxy, flat and feeling stale,” though some others conceded the point. CNN International, InformationWeek and ReadWriteWeb all cast doubts on my prediction.

Funny how he links to the critics who doubted him, but not to anyone who agrees with him. Wonder why that is?

I’m not anti-Apple, a company I admire. (And for the record, I don’t own Apple stock, and never have.)

I don’t have an iPhone, though my son does. I have, however, tested Apple’s handsets, and many others.

“I’m not racist. Some of my friends are black!”

But Apple, I submit, is no longer king of the smartphone hill. Reports from Canalysis, ComScore, IDC, Gartner, Nielsen and more over the past year all show Apple’s growth is slowing (and in some cases falling), while phones based on the GoogleGOOG Android operating system have been booming.

Not a single link to back up any of his claims AND he ignores Apple’s ginormous profit share compared to the rest of the industry. This guy could write for Business Insider.

Some commenters acknowledge there are better phones on the market, such as the Samsung Galaxy SII. Observers, though, note that it’s not just about the hardware. There’s also the “Apple experience” and the fact everyone copies Apple, hoping to become cool.

Yes, the “Apple Experience”, which can be defined as “the experience of getting timely software updates on up to three year-old hardware, a massive selection of apps, iCloud and an incredibly smooth, intuitive interface.” But I must have bought my iPhone because it was “cool”.

Yes, Apple has the most and best software, but that advantage is going away. Android apps have effectively caught up. Brand loyalty will fade. Consumer trends can shift in a heart beat.

I love reading articles describing Android with qualifiers like “effectively”. As for “brand loyalty” and “consumer trends”, try convincing Chinese buyers that Android’s just as good.

Face it: Deagon only wrote this piece to capitalize on the pageviews from the first one. I’d call him “the Michael Bay of writers,” but Transformers 2 actually had more thought behind it.

The iPhone is a tool, not some magic wand.

Speaking of tools…