Beating the iPhone is a tall order and it’s unclear that anyone is even close. Yes folks have good looking phones and are matching some of the other features of the iPhone, but as a completely packaged easy to use consumer product there does not seem to be a real contender. Yet the iPhone has one potential Achilles heel. For the time being anyhow, Apple has decided to expose some of the core capabilities of the phone only to “native” apps, i.e. those downloaded and installed via the Apple App Store. Those core capabilities include multi-touch, the accelerometer, the contact and call databases, etc.
Clearly Apple expects the App Store to be a revenue source. A radical game changer would be if a phone made the same capabilities available via a first rate browser on the phone. This would be possible by allowing Javascript to instantiate objects that represent those parts of phone functionality. Obviously, a security model would be needed for this but this would seem fairly straight forward. When you browse to a site that includes Javascript which wants to access the phone you get a dialog box that lets you approve the level of access you want to grant to the site (think of this much like the privacy dialog box you get when you install a Facebook application).
So first time you go to Google Maps, you would give it access to your GPS. Then on each subsequent visit you see exactly where you are. This model would do away with any need for an App Store and tie a phone with all its capabilities deeply into the fabric of the web. Apple has always been loathe to yield that level of control, which is why this represents an opportunity for someone. Of course Apple could theoretically respond quickly, but at this point others should be willing to try something daring if they want a shot at all.
