After some initial disappointing press coverage indicating the iPhone 4S was a thud, it now appears that the real impact of the iPhone 4S and IOS5 won't be realized until users get the product in their hands. We have to wait for Newton's Third Law of Motion to move and realign some marketshare positions and, potentially, some changes in strategic direction for your Social Media marketing programs.  It could just end up being the "thud" felt round the world.

• Android's open ecosystem is starting to show signs of stress (e.g.: HTC hacking)  But there could be some changes in the works. The Android announcement got pushed back in deference to Steve Job's untimely death. But there's some more to that STORY
• The iPod changed the music industry channel. How will Newstand affect Amazon in light of the FIRE announcement ? ... or perhaps Amazon is moving into a different vertical silo?
• Will American Greetings be affected by the ability to send cards? Apple has expanded with this release into competition with some rather big old players.
• SIRI has some capacity to directly get in the pants of Google search. 

Perhaps SIRI is the big sleeper that is going to sneak up on brand marketing. In September, Eric Schmidt told Congress that the market is changing:

"Google faces competition from numerous sources including other general search engines (such as Microsoft‟s Bing, Yahoo!, and Blekko); specialized search sites, including travel sites (like Expedia
and Travelocity), restaurant reviews (like Yelp), and shopping sites (like Amazon and eBay); social media sites (like Facebook); and mobile applications beyond count, just to name a few.
For example, let‟s say you‟re looking for a local restaurant. You might search on Google for “local
restaurant,” but increasingly people are going on to Facebook and Twitter to ask their friends for
restaurant recommendations. Or, you might use the Yelp mobile application on your iPhone or
Android phone to find restaurants near your location. More than ever before we‟re competing vigorously against each of these other ways for users to access information.
Consumers have a truly vast array of options – some search and some not – from which to access information. Well-known shopping sites like Amazon, Wal-Mart, and eBay are essentially search engines that focus on product search and provide customers with an opportunity to buy a good at the end of their search"

To paraphrase: People don't want to get a choice list in search, they want and answer.

SIRI, by tapping into Wolfram Alpha, Yelp, etc. is going to impact how search is done: creating that level of foundation for growth probably took some time to think through. Who else might SIRI link to in the future? Who writes code to link to it?  There seems to be a lot more planning of those data structures that you might first realize.

That could be a fundamental change in how we search for things. As a sidebar, the facial recognition has some pretty amazing potential for marketers in the future. . Facebook has that for a static pic, but apple can now grab facial dimensions from various angles which means 3d. And they are the only ones that I am aware of at this point, who can do that. Monetization of that capability has some pretty big implications, so again, planning for that expansion probably took quite a bit of time and merits some pondering on the part of market strategists.

SO the jury is out until we start to see how consumers start to use the new device... only then will we realize what impact the 4s has made. If it's true to form with Apple, it will be seamless. Consumer's won't realize what's happening but you can be certain that there are some people in vertical markets today saying "OMG, they can take my business" as they look back at how iTunes turned the music distribution channel on it's head.

What are your thoughts? Are seeing seeing other impacts?