Marketing exclusively to the iPhone dramatically narrows your potential reach, says Zaw Thet, CEO and co-founder of 4INFO.
"I think the reach is limited in terms of the whole market share," Kleinberg says. "Think of the huge market share that Nokia has on a global scale that dwarfs the iPhone's scale. But I've never had anyone come up to me at a cocktail party and show me their cool new Nokia app."
The other side of that equation, however, is if you can develop an effective experience, it can be an incredible powerful tool for the customer.
"If you have a breakthrough idea, it's a great platform," Kleinberg adds. "Brands are interested, but I think that it's an emerging technology and there are not always the largest budgets set aside for something that is 'experimental.'"
Thet points out that the iPhone deserves to play a part in any mobile marketing program, but it should not be the exclusive focus for mobile marketers. "To ignore everybody else is to waste much of the value that is delivered through mobile," he says.
And don't forget that the iPhone is an expensive device that requires a monthly data plan.
"That's fine, as long as you're only marketing to that audience, but if you want to reach the millions of people who don't use AT&T, or love their BlackBerry, or that don't have data plans, you need to go beyond the iPhone," Thet says.
In fact, everyone iMedia spoke with for this story mentioned SMS as a much greater path to achieve the level of scalability needed for most marketing objectives. It's cheap and ubiquitous.
"[The iPhone] allows for the richest experience, but I would still say that SMS is very powerful in its ability to connect various other types of media," creative marketing strategist Adam Broitman says.
"You don't necessarily need all the functionality of the iPhone. A lot of the branded apps on the iPhone do too much stuff," he says, while "a text message can power an entire CRM program."
The basic missing links
Speaking of simple things like short messaging, the iPhone is still missing some basics that mobile marketers, in particular, have relied on for years.
The iPhone still doesn't have multimedia-messaging capabilities. Also, there's no way to forward a text message. These features are nearly universally available on every mobile phone on the market today.
"If you want to do an MMS campaign, don't target iPhones," Thet says.
Derek Merrill, VP of products and founder of MoVoxx, is particularly disappointed about the lack of basic SMS forwarding.
"I consider this to be a pretty egregious oversight on part of Apple," he says. "We often build in incentives that induce users to want to forward on an SMS offer to friends in their contact book. This activity is blocked for iPhone users."
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