Don't Underestimate Siri
October 10, 2011
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I don't mean SIRI, Sirius XM radio. Feel free to underestimate them all you want.
I'm talking about Siri, the new natural-language personal assistant that has debuted on the iPhone 4S. Lots of bloggers were disappointed. That's because they overlooked or didn't understand the idea that Siri makes the power of a smartphone available to non-power users. A lot of people who would never open the browser to do a map-assisted search for an Italian restaurant will be comfortable asking Siri to do it for them. Once these people see their friends talking to their personal assistants - in plain English (or French, or German, or Korean, or Chinese, or Japanese) they will know they must have an iPhone.
A million people already drained the total iPhone 4S inventory of Apple, AT&T and Verizon in less than a week after the announcement. (Sprint still has a few of the higher-priced 64 GB model in stock.) These folks know what the analysts don't.
Siri may eventually be in your car; your TV set; your dishwasher; he'll read QR codes for you and figure out where you should buy your next big purchase. And Apple may get a cut. Even if they don't, they'll end up knowing more about your life than Facebook.
Don't underestimate him.
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