T3 interview with Apple's Greg Joswiak

Never seen too far from his iPhone, Joswiak speaks highly of the App store and Apple's gaming future

T3 caught some time today with Greg Joswiak, Vice President of iPod and iPhone Product Marketing for Apple, to discuss mobile gaming and iPods. He also let slip three new games coming to the App Store - Rolando, where you roll characters around the screen, helping them over obstacles and to solve puzzles; the classic game Sim City, and Need For Speed Undercover, a car game.

"The quarter that closed September was the biggest iPod non-holiday quarter ever. So iPods did extremely well. Certainly a big part of that success was the launch of the September products. In matter of fact, our market share in the UK is now 62%, which is an all-time high, so again we’re doing very well. The Nano is a key part of that, there are a number of different things going on with Nano. We’ve gone back to a portrait orientation, which customers seem to have a better affinity to. Bringing back bold colours, more colours than ever, and bolder than ever. And for the first time we put the different colours at both price points. That’s been really really popular, and we expect the Nano will continue to be not just the most popular iPod, but the most popular music player on the planet. And probably the most popular tech gift yet again this holidays. So the Nano is doing extremely well."

 

Speaking of the iPod Nanos, he said "we don’t break them down by sub-family. We just report a big number, it’s somewhere over 11 million for the last quarter, and obviously the September products are a big part of that. A lot of that is to be expected for Nano. It has continuously year in year out since we introduced it in 2005 been the most popular music player. I think where we surprised a lot of people is with the success of the iPod Touch."

"Having a second generation with this contoured design, and continuing to have this large three and a half-inch screen is all nice but where we’re getting the benefit is with the apps store. The apps store really changed the dynamics in a big way for the iPod Touch because, you know, in over 100 days we’ve had over 6,000 applications, with over 200 million downloads. So there are 6,000 more reasons to buy an iPhone or an iPod Touch. But the biggest category of all in the apps store has been games. There are over 1,500 games and there’s a great affinity between the iPod Touch customer and those games. And that’s part of our positioning of it as the funnest iPod ever – you’ve got your music, your video, and your games."

"And the gameplay I think has surprised a lot of people, because it’s not just the casual games. There are real 3D games, and it’s hard to imagine we’re only a little over 100 days into it. There are already so many games and as we look at it, to us it really seems this is the future of gameplay. Whereas a lot of these devices [Nintendo DS and Sony PSP] are more in the past. And a big part of that is not just the device itself, which is easier to carry, and has the touch display and accelerometer which is great for gameplay, but it’s the electronic distribution of the apps as well."

"That changes everything. Whereas apps on other devices have to be delivered primarily physically, they cost a lot more, £25 versus almost all the games cost £5, because they don’t have to worry about licensing and manufacturing hardware, they don’t have to worry about forecasting, returns, missing the forecast, what happens if there’s a problem with the product, you have the full back inventory here, again not only can the customer buy the apps from the apps store on every device, every iPod Touch and iPhone, but it also gives the developer the ability to update."

"So if there’s bugs found, things you want to fix or features you want to add, they can do that through the apps store, whereas it doesn’t really exist in the physical world. So we think we’re changing a lot of the dynamics, and again at these prices, at under £5 a game, not only are people saving money, they’re also discovering more because they end up buying more games, because they’re five games for the price of one on another console. So we’ve seen this is getting some pretty significant traction. And we’ve geared our advertising and marketing towards that too."

 

 

It's not just the casual gamer playing games on the iPods, says Joswiak, "It’s both because one of the things that’s also a big part of our success with the iPod and the Nano is the share we have in the teen market for example, which is higher than our general share. For example our market share in the US is 78% and there’s a group there that follows the teen share, which is 87%. So that gives you that leverage into this teen market which is able to then have their iPod, which again can play their music and their videos, and then go right into the games. And that’s why on the store you see everything from the casual games, there’s no doubt there are a lot of casual games, to the 3D oriented games, action games, and the amazing thing is you squint your eyes and think ‘where is this going to be six months from now?’ Because this is what people have done very quickly."

"We only started doing this, released the apps store for customers about two months ago, and of course this version of the iPod Touch came out in September, so three months ago I should say, so if you squint your eyes you can see a future where you say it’s amazing the things you’ll see as far as gameplay, and we know from working with these developers and the things they tell us they’re working on, especially original content ideas, I think they’re going to blow everyone away. Because again the computer power and the 3D graphic power here [iPod Touch] is significantly greater than what you have here [picks up Nintendo DS]. So this allows people to do significantly higher quality games. And the Touch is always in your pocket, whereas you can’t always carry some other games consoles."

Related links:

• iPhone launch in pictures
• Video of the iPhone 3G launch