The problem with Verizon and Microsoft's new ad campaigns.
It's open season on iPhone this week, seemingly. Two of the biggest names in mobile - Verizon Wireless and Microsoft - have launched marketing campaigns that go on the attack against Apple's handset.
Verizon's is most explicit: its iDon't advert promotes the upcoming Motorola Droid handset with a list of features that the iPhone is lacking. "iDon't have a real keyboard", "iDon't run simultaneous apps", "iDon't take 5-megapixel pictures" and so on:
The final slogan - "Droid Does" - hammers home the point that Motorola's Android-powered handset will trump the iPhone for several key features. And it probably will, too.
However, the campaign is missing the point. iPhone hasn't ever really been about specifications. Its camera - although improved in the latest 3GS model - has always been underpowered compared to its rivals.
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It's never been able to run apps in the background or had a physical keyboard. Hell, it only got MMS a few months ago. The point is, 30 million people still bought one.
iPhone's appeal is a heady mix of a beautiful user interface and razor-sharp marketing - how many millions of consumers think Apple invented the idea of mobile apps?
Criticising iPhone's specs might hit home with gadget-savvy early adopters - but they're the same consumers who'll be picking holes in Android (and Motorola for that matter).
Microsoft's campaign is less aggressive and more playful. It's a viral video explaining some of the apps supposedly rejected from Windows Marketplace for Mobile - a novelty virtual sundial, a rip-off of Pong, and 'Great Moustaches of the World':
It's wry and funny, but if the subtext is designed to be a shot at all the novelty apps available on iPhone's App Store... well, it's as misplaced as Verizon's ad.
Those novelty apps on iPhone? A lot of them are hugely popular. Popular enough that people are showing them off to friends and family, and contributing to the word-of-mouth buzz around the device.
It started from the earliest days of the App Store, when ME lost count of the times we met hardened mobile content executives excitedly showing off iPint and PhoneSaber.
Fart apps, animated mouths, chicken kazoos... Not only do people love these apps, but the openness that allowed them onto the App Store in the first place is the same openness that's fuelling the development of hundreds - if not thousands - of groundbreaking, innovative, 'unsilly' apps for iPhone.
Many of which aren't heading to Windows Mobile or Verizon's app store in the near future, it's worth noting.
iPhone is there to be shot at, it's true - and this isn't an article suggesting it's a perfect, uncriticisable handset that should be left to dominate the smartphone market.
We may be still waiting for the handset that makes Windows Mobile sexy again, but Android is currently spawning a succession of phones with a legitimate claim to be true rivals to the iPhone. Droid among them.
Attacking the iPhone so openly shows confidence (or desperation, depending how cynical you are, but we'll go with confidence).
However, it also requires a recognition that technical specifications aren't what sold 30 million iPhones, nor is the flood of novelty apps a hindrance to its success. Verizon and Microsoft's ads are great fun for journalists and bloggers, but distortion-reality field quenchers, they are not.
