Making Movies: The Next Big Thing in iPhones?
Think back to a time before iPods. Back then, digital music was such a hassle that few people bothered to buy portable MP3 players. Until Apple made it easy. Then came photos. Other than using snapshots as wallpaper …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is a speculation piece, but it sits on a well-documented Apple arc: the iPod ecosystem showed how Apple turns a 'hassle' category like digital music into mass behavior, and the April 12 Los Angeles Times piece described how the App Store had already upended the economics of game software. BusinessWeek's thesis is that movie-making is the next task Apple might simplify on the same template.
Video on the iPhone has so far been framed around playback and friction, not creation: Hollywood spent 2007 figuring out how to fit its content onto the device (New York Times), while bloggers wrestled with how awkward sharing video between iPods and iPhones actually was (Infinite Loop, December 2007). The Forbes question of whether the iPod would kill Blockbuster pointed the same direction — Apple's devices keep absorbing categories built around physical media.
First-order effects
- If Apple applies its music-and-photos playbook to video capture and editing, iPhone owners stop being just the audience for Hollywood content fitted to the small screen and start producing video themselves — directly extending the device's role beyond the playback-centric framing of the 2007 coverage.
- App Store developers, whose market the Los Angeles Times documented reshaping game software economics, gain a plausible new category: creation and editing tools riding the same low-friction distribution channel.
Second-order effects
- Dedicated camcorder and point-and-shoot camera makers face the same substitution pressure the iPod exerted on CD and rental businesses — the Blockbuster question generalizes from distribution hardware to recording hardware.
- Hollywood's strategy of porting existing content to the iPhone competes for the same screen minutes with user-created video, weakening the assumption that professionally produced material defines the device's value.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the smartphone consolidates yet another standalone product category — this time the camcorder rather than the MP3 player — continuing the structural shift in which Apple's integrated hardware-plus-store model absorbs single-purpose electronics one hassle at a time.
- Carriers and studios lose gatekeeping over what appears on the phone's screen as creation tools multiply supply beyond licensed content, echoing the disruption the App Store inflicted on traditional game publishers.
The trend: Apple's hassle-removal playbook is pushing the iPhone from a consumption device toward a creation tool, absorbing another standalone electronics category in the process.