iPhone 5, Managing Expectations

With the announcement of the iPhone 5 - as well as other "magical" devices - Apple, the genius marketeers that they are, have consistently managed to build a media frenzy before every Keynote Event. Before Apple Keynotes involved a congregation of share and stakeholders, gathered around a presentation. Apple and Steve Jobs transformed that into the show that it is today. Steve turned these presentations into a genuine occasion, and an excitement formed around their products never before seen within the early IT marketplace.

After an almost dormant period through the late 90's, Apple's infamous Keynotes began to lose some of its momentum: partly due to the departure of Jobs. The iPod, along with the return of their messiah - Steve Jobs - Apple would once again begin to make a seismal impression on the media, culminating in 2007 with the now| infamous original iPhone presentation. From that moment onward, every Apple Keynote would follow a whirlwind of hype and anticipation.

Here we are then five years older, riding on the crest of yet another wave of media hype and expectation. The difference this time, like their dormant period, is that there is no Steve Jobs. We have witnessed keynotes before from Apple without Steve, however they were generally, an "evolution" of a product and not the revolution we all expect. This time the world is expecting more, we expect to see a revolution on the scale of the original iPhone. How Apple will handle that expectation without Steve is fascinating to say the least. This was Steve's last project, something that he perhaps knew too; the last device to be directly influenced through Steve Jobs, ought to carry its own weight and expectation.

What else, revolutionary, is there to do with this particular generation of smartphones, there's a shift coming, some of us have foreseen it, nevertheless this Keynote may not be it. Google could be onto something with "Google Glass", but they are hardly renowned for their product launches.

Has Apple attained an almost stratospheric pinnacle of marketing that whenever they launch a new device it shall meet expectations, caused by the bloated expectations of their own creation? Perhaps, though it's predicament most wish they had. I'm fairly certain the iPhone 5 will be a marvelous phone, that on a purely aesthetic level would lead the smartphone race for a further few years, I'm just waiting for that product that changes the world - again.

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