Sep

17

Anyone expecting the Google mobile operating system to change the market as Apple’s iPhone has over the past year will probably be disappointed - for now.

Industry insiders who have worked on Google’s Android system say it will struggle in the near term to match the consumer enthusiasm generated by the iPhone, which redefined the touch-screen phone market and greatly improved mobile Web surfing.

Instead, Google sees Android as an open source platform for designing mobile devices and says it will encourage innovation by allowing outside software developers to tinker with the system and create better mobile programs and services.

But these things take time, and the first phone using Android, code-named the Google “Dream” phone, is unlikely to wow consumers. The device is made by HTC of Taiwan. Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile unit reportedly intends to introduce it in New York on Tuesday.

“I’m not sure the consumer experience is significantly better than that of the iPhone,” said Rajeev Chand, a wireless analyst at the investment bank Rutberg, who has tried out an early version of Android. “When the iPhone came out, the experience was several orders of magnitude better than anything that was out there.”

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Sep

15

Google is everywhere, with its ubiquitous Web search engine, Google Maps for navigation, Google Docs online office suite, Google Checkout shopping and most recently, Google Chrome Web browser. Next up: Google’s Android operating system for mobile phones, likely to debut in the weeks ahead.

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The first mobile device built around Android will be carried by T-Mobile in a still-unnamed handset designed by Taiwanese smartphone powerhouse HTC. The Android phone will go up against Apple’s iPhone, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry and a host of devices powered by Nokia’s Symbian and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating systems. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

While every market Google has entered is highly competitive, none may be more so than the mobile phone market, specifically the market for smartphones, which can handle e-mail and Web surfing.

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Symbian-based phones s led in worldwide market share for smartphone mobile operating systems, with 57.1 percent of sales in the second quarter of this year, according to Gartner Research.

That likely reflects Nokia’s status as the world’s largest cell-phone maker. Next in line were Research In Motion, 17.4 percent; Windows Mobile, 12 percent; Linux, 7.3 percent; Apple’s Mac SO X, 2.8 percent; and Palm, 2.3 percent. Another 1.1 percent included Sharp Sidekick devices based on the Danger platform.

In the United States, Research In Motion’s mobile operating system dominates the smartphone market, with 41 percent, according to a February 2008 report by Canalys consulting, with Apple capturing 28 percent, Windows Mobile, 21 percent, and Palm, 9 percent.

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Aug

29

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interesting gallery of new vs. old

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Jul

23

email_image_20070612.jpgThe iPhone has just launched, but we can assume that Apple already is working on the next version of it. That’s appropriate. The iPhone is a wonderful phone-music player hybrid but it’s a product Apple should churn, not leave in the market unchanged. I’m no designer. But here are a few suggestions for what the next version of the hot Apple cell phone should include:
1. Games. The global mobile games market is on track to grow 50 percent in 2007 to $4.3 billion, and will hit $9.6 billion by 2011, according to market researcher Gartner. There is no excuse for Apple failing to jump start this part of the iPhone market. It wasn’t a priority at launch, but this phone is far more capable than most as a vehicle for mobile games.
2. More carriers. AT&T is certainly a huge carrier and perhaps it paid dearly to become the exclusive wireless phone carrier for the iPhone. But the iPhone ought to be liberated, as a group dubbed Free Press says. There is no need to shackle this gadget to a closed network. Consumers truly want the freedom to use a device on any network. We’ll see if the federal government weighs in on this one.
3. Force feedback technology. As I said before, iPhone users would have a much better time dialing and texting if they could only get some force feedback from the keypad. I know that Immersion, the force-feedback technology licensor based in San Jose, is a long jaunt from Cupertino. But I’ll spring for the cab ride for Steve Jobs.

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Feb

23

actv_hiddeniphonedetails.jpgFour things about the iPhone that you probably overlooked from Steve Job’s MacWorld keynote. They include what the calendar application looks like, how you’ll view traffic in Google Maps, another way to scroll through long lists and how ringtones may ultimately work.

iPhonePlanet

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Feb

21

steve.jpgCisco, Apple Settle High-Stakes iPhone Trademark-Infringement Lawsuit

Cisco Systems Inc. and Apple Inc. said Wednesday they have settled the trademark-infringement lawsuit that threatened to derail Apple’s use of the “iPhone” name for its much-hyped new iPod-cellular phone gadget.

The companies said Apple will be allowed to use the name for its sleek new multimedia device in exchange for exploring wide-ranging “interoperability” between the companies’ products in the areas of security, consumer and business communications.

No other details of the agreement were released, and representatives from both companies declined to comment beyond their short joint statement.

The companies both said they would dismiss any pending legal actions regarding the trademark.

The showdown between the Silicon Valley tech heavyweights erupted last month when Cisco sued Apple in San Francisco federal court claiming that Apple’s use of the iPhone name constituted a “willful and malicious” violation of a trademark that Cisco has owned since 2000.

Cisco’s Linksys division has been using the trademark since last spring on a line of phones that make free long-distance calls over the Internet using a technology called Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.

The lawsuit was filed a day after Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs unveiled his own company’s iPhone, a multimedia device that operates over the cellular network instead of the Internet.

Apple initially called the lawsuit “silly” and argued that it was entitled to use the name because the phones operate over different networks and would not compete with each other.

Cisco maintained that in an era of “convergence” — where increasingly intelligent networks and devices can handle a variety of different types of voice, video, data and other transmissions — the two companies’ phones could eventually take on different features and wind up competing head-to-head.

The result would be “confusion, mistake and deception among consumers,” according to the lawsuit.

Negotiations between the companies broke down just hours before Jobs’ dramatic unveiling of the product Jan. 9 in San Francisco.

The sticking point apparently was Cisco’s demand that in order to use the iPhone name, Apple would have to open up its famously closed products to communicate with some of Cisco’s offerings.

Neither company would discuss what future products might come from the collaboration. But analysts said the deal could help both companies strengthen their positions in the increasingly fierce battle to deliver video and other applications through the network directly to consumers’ homes.

Zeus Kerravala, a network infrastructure analyst with Yankee Group, said there are ample opportunities for the companies to dream up collaborative projects to win over consumers.

One possibility, he said, could be the creation of a Linksys device that users call into to record podcasts that are then automatically uploaded to iTunes, which would make the creation and dissemination of such broadcasts easier.

However, he cautioned that both companies need to be willing to share in order to make the partnership work.

“If the two actually can work together, then the combination of the two is obviously more powerful than the two butting heads,” he said. “There’s no company out there that understands network service like Cisco. And you could argue no other company understands user experience like Apple.”

The dispute highlights the shifting business strategies for both companies.

Cisco, which is Silicon Valley’s most richly valued company with a market capitalization of $166 billion, makes most of its money by selling the routers and switches that direct data traffic over computer networks.

However, the San Jose-based company is also making an aggressive push into the consumer market and toward products that help deliver content, such as cable set-top boxes, wireless broadband routers for the home, and equipment for playing digital music.

Cupertino-based Apple is also expanding its business range from beyond primarily a Macintosh computer and software maker as it capitalizes on the demand for digital music and the soaring popularity of its iTunes and iPod products.

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Feb

15

itunes_logo.jpgWarner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. walked into the 3GSM World Congress today and pointed right at the pink elephant in the room: The iPhone. Bronfman warned the industry that if it cannot improve mobile music services, it could lose the market to Apple.

Bronfman said that while there are millions of music phones on the global market, only 8.8% of users of these handsets have ever downloaded a music track over the air. Why? Because carrier mobile music services are too expensive and too hard to use.

Ouch. Score one for Apple.

“Apple has raised the bar in terms of what users expect,” Bronfman said.

While that may be the case, Apple has yet to, you know, actually release a working mobile phone, much less a fully useable version of iTunes that works over the air on a carrier network.

The wireless industry here in Barcelona has had mixed reactions to the iPhone. On one hand, many execs are clearly scared Apple will steal the mobile content market. On the other hand, some insiders remain confident that Apple’s first iPhones will be far from flawless, due to the company’s inexperience with making cell phones.

You can bet this debate will carry over to CTIA next month in Orlando.

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Feb

14

itunes_logo.jpgThe online digital music business stinks.
ITunes, Rhapsody, Zune Store, Napster — you name it. They’re all failures.

The hype has people believing otherwise. Bloggers, tech writers and your friends who know more about computers than you do shout that iTunes is the best thing to happen to music since the microphone. Or maybe psychedelic drugs.

But it’s just not true. Nearly six years after the introduction of iTunes and the iPod, online music has failed to interest the vast majority of the world’s music consumers. Which is no doubt why Steve Jobs recently called for an end to copy-protection software on digital songs. Something has to change, or iTunes and its ilk will never break into the mass market.

Jobs admitted that iTunes’ penetration has been weak. In his discussed-to-death essay, “Thoughts On Music” — posted a couple of weeks ago on Apple’s website — Jobs noted that only about 3% of songs on a typical iPod are bought on iTunes. The rest are either ripped from CDs and transferred into iPods, or illegitimately downloaded for free off file-sharing sites such as Kazaa or eDonkey.

The reality for iTunes might not even be that good.

In a report released in December, Forrester Research said it did a strenuous, independent analysis of iTunes purchases. It found that just 3.2% of all “online households” — homes that have computers and Internet connections, a subset of all homes — made an iTunes purchase over a one-year period.

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Feb

8

iPhonePlanet: Engadget has shed a little light on the so called letter to the FCC. It’s a hoax.
see both letters here

appleletterfcc.jpgIn a letter Apple writes to the FCC on October 12th asking for documents regarding the iPhone’s schematic design, block diagram, theory of operation, and antenna information to remain confidential and kept from public disclosure indefinitely.

They state that ‘…the public disclosure of the above mentioned documents might be harmful to [Apple] and would give a competitor an unfair advantage in the market.‘

Although Apple already disclosed the ‘theory of operation’ during Steve Jobs’ keynote, they ask the FCC to insure that business sensitive information remains confidential until June 15, 2007,’ a specific date not previously mentioned by Apple. Jobs cited FCC approval as the reason for delay in the launch of the iPhone.

June 15th is the final day of the WWDC.

In related news, Apple removed the colored shuffles from the main image on its homepage and replaced it with the previous image promoting the iPhone.

Your comments are welcome here.

Feb

8

samsung.jpgSamsung today announced its Ultra Smart F700 mobile phone, aimed to compete against Apple’s iPhone. Showcased at 3GSM World Congress, the F700 features a 2.78-inch touch screen as well as a QWERTY key pad. A “Drag and drop” method of touch screen was adopted for easier menu navigation along with music play list control.

Adjusting the volume, play lists, brightness of screen, and other menu control can be controlled by touching the screen, Samsung said.

No word on pricing or availability.

iPhonePlanet: What it doesn’t have: WiFi, iTunes, iPhoto, Widgets, OS X, a thin form factor, Safari, rich HTML Email, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, two finger pinch to resize photos, seamless integration with the Mac.

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