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Category Archives: Mobile Technology

22 Predictions About iPhone 2.0

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Wouldn’t it be fun if they name it iPhone ][? It won’t happen, but … Then they could even have a mini-upgrade iPhone ][+! Okay, that’s enough geekiniscing for the day.

Spent the day hiking in Marin and having a BBQ with some old friends, somehow the iPhone came up as a topic numerous times, despite none of us being iPhone owners. There’ve been rumors aplenty about an iPhone 2.0, and I think it’s a pretty safe bet something‘s coming. As always, Steve’s playing it close to the chest, which is part of what makes Apple such a fun/special company (disclaimers: (1) I own Apple stock, (2) I own a MacBook, (3) I don’t own an iPod or iPhone, (4) I’m one of those guys that was fairly anti-Mac until mid-last year, (5) I don’t own any black turtlenecks).

In the day of chatting, a few ideas came through our conversations. I’ve decided to go throw my stage in the ground, even though I may be 4 or more months early on any timing. Further, I’m adding a little “likelihood” to each prediction.

  1. I believe Apple will have 2 different iPhones available on the market simultaneously (not just v1 and v2, but two distinct models with a lot of similarities). Likely
  2. At least one of these models will have a keyboard and will take on BlackBerry/Windows Mobile more aggressively in the business market. Possible
  3. 3G. I Garontee!
  4. Video recording. Very likely
  5. Deeper .mac integration will be built-into the phone(s). Very likely
  6. Put the above three statements together for a built-in live video streaming feature. Possible
  7. Bluetooth tethering will be possible. Likely
  8. A 4+ megapixel camera will be included. Possible
  9. One model will be somewhat smaller/lighter/thinner than the 1.0 model. Likely
  10. Microsoft will have some type of Office for iPhone available to coincide with the launch. Possible
  11. It will not have two cameras (Steve won’t even allow them to put two buttons on it!). Not a chance
  12. The battery still won’t be replacable. Likely
  13. Real GPS is included. Possible

And now for some more outlandish possibilities. All are a bit more… out there. Warning: to my more serious readers, this list gets increasingly goofy. If in a hurry, it’s probably best to skip it altogether.

  1. It might come in multiple colors.
  2. They include an ATSC tuner for live, real-time HDTV reception.
  3. They skip 3G but include Wimax support.
  4. Instead of just two (or one) models, Apple introduces two different distinct lines of iPhones. The second is a much smaller unit – think “iPhone Nano” – but is still all-touchscreen. In an even wackier move, it’s a flip-phone.
  5. They make the screen capable of playing 720p resolution video. Again, the more extreme prediction has an HDMI connector and IR interface and doubles as an AppleTV.
  6. It has an infrared emitter and supports the TV-B-Gone technology. Just kidding.
  7. Apple massively updates the .mac infrastructure to include mobile social networking features for iPhone users. This probably won’t be heavily used as iPhone people can actually feel the aura of other nearby iPhone people…
  8. Voice-operation for all controls. As a downside it has the voice of Marvin from Hitchhiker’s, and after 90 days of use goes crazy, HAL 9000-style. After this point, one in every ten times the user touches the screen the iPhone starts playing Rick Astley at max volume.
  9. Rather than continue support for YouTube, all videos are sourced from 1938Media, who Apple becomes a sponsor for and Loren introduces a Fake Steve Jobs puppet.
  10. Forget touchscreen, instead consider these three words: rotary dial interface.

Dash Seems Cool, But Can It Go the Distance?

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I’ve followed Dash, the Internet-enabled GPS company, for quite some time (I even tried to be a beta tester), as I utterly love the concept. GPS receivers should obviously have Internet access to download new maps, get traffic data, and then of course do some more clever things. Like have my entire address book and calendar built-in. And have Internet services that call my phone when it’s time to leave if I want to make my next meeting on time. I completely expect the category to standardize around these services in the next few years. In the meantime, Dash is trying to be first to market and grab a comfortable spot.

First, here’s the state of the GPS market as I see it (as it pertains to Dash)

  1. Dash is competing with massively entrenched, well-known players (Garmin, TomTom, Magellan, Mio, Pioneer, Sony, others, and of course, all the in-car receivers). The best of these companies (listed above in order) make great products, most of which are extremely well-liked by consumers.
  2. In my opinion, enabling Internet access into a GPS unit is at best a sustainable innovation. In other words, this isn’t a revolution, it’s an evolution, and Garmin/TomTom/others probably already have working prototypes with similar functionality.
  3. Major players are spending a lot of money on advertising (Garmin does Superbowl commercials!).
  4. It is likely to suffer as an industry as GPS-enabled cell phones become widely available and affordable (which is probably why Garmin has introduced a phone, and is simultaneously facing revenue/sales problems).

So if I interpret these signs, I see a startup attempting to enter a commodity industry with a product that I’ll label as “slightly better”. Before any Dash fans roar at me, I’m not trying to say they haven’t made a great product, as I haven’t used it at all – the key point here is the consumer perception of their product. In other words, to the average Joe about to buy a GPS receiver, the Dash only stands out with one additional feature, and that feature is fairly complicated, which drastically diminishes its true value in comparison.

It’s getting mixed user reviews on Amazon (with 4-ish stars and is placing nicely in the top-25 for GPS), Engadget’s happy, and Walt sorta likes it, the combination of which isn’t enough to help push it over the top. Somehow this Silicon Valley startup needs to get out of the Valley and into millions and millions of peoples’ cars before the rest of the industry catches up. Personally, I don’t see how they get there in time.

At a personal level, friends have challenged me on my doubts, making Slingbox-to-Sony comparisons. Here are the quick differences:

  • Slingbox/Sony LFTV was a brand new category to define – Dash is an existing, huge one (that may actually be on the verge of decline).
  • Sony’s product was terrible (sure I’m biased, but virtually every single user and professional review backs up this comment), whereas companies like Garmin/TomTom make great products. Further, these products are cheaper than Dash.
  • Slingbox averages 4.5 stars from Amazon users (181 reviews as of this writing), and had massive impact from strong word of mouth effects, yet Dash’s user reviews are nowhere near as glowing.
  • Slingbox had an instant “I get it, I need it” (or “I don’t need it”) response when people heard about it, one that left almost no room for discussion. Dash has to define itself around existing categories with incremental (albeit cool) technologies. Worse still, Dash has a monthly/annual service fee.

Part of me really wants to see Dash overcome these odds. Another part of me thinks this is a whole lot of money chasing an excessively elusive goal. I believe the company’s best chance at mere survival is through licensing, which is another tricky path to follow on its own.

I hate to say it, but I believe this is one of those disappointing moments where good technology doesn’t appear to have the legs it’s going to need to survive for the long haul. Can Dash navigate these windy roads? Will I come up with yet another terrible pun? Can this post get any longer? Only time will tell.

Updated: while re-reading this, I realized I’m leaving out a key point here: it is entirely possible that the cost structure for running Dash as a company is low enough that they do not need to be a top player in the space. It could be a healthy company without being as big as the Garmin/TomTom/other pool…

Is it time to kill voicemail?

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Remember back when voicemail came out?  I do.  At the time I had an answering machine with a little microcassette that, more likely than not, would accidentally pop out of the machine, intermittently delete messages, or simply choose not to record them in the first place.  There were digital options as well, the ones that used fancy schmancy microchips to record messages, adding a sweet touch of HAL-9000 to the voice of every recorded message.  And then one day our phone companies told us we could part ways with these relics, that they would do us the service of storing our messages for us, all for a low monthly fee.

And we parted ways with our crusty machinery.  We parted in droves.   We parted so fast that within months answering machines had lower resale value than HD-DVD players today.  This move may have actually marked the beginning of the “services” era, where companies started seeking out additional ways to make monthly money with only an incremental increase in services.  And I think we’re reaching one of those interesting inflection points where it’s time for some of those services, specifically voicemail, to start leaving our culture.

Why do I pick on useful, venerable voicemail?  The signs are in the air for its demise.  First, we’re seeing cell phones become the dominant phones in people’s lives, and I don’t have a stat to prove it, but I’d take a wager that home phone usage is on the downturn.  And with cell phones comes automatic caller-ID, automatic call history/logging, and the most blessed service of all, texting.

While nothing beats a phone call for catching up with a friend or loved one, and nothing beats a phone call for resolving an interpersonal dispute or a contract negotiation, or anything else that requires a lengthy conversation, nothing beats texting for a quick message.  If you take a moment to think about the majority of voicemails you receive, I’ll take another wager that the overwhelming majority of them could be reduced into three words:  Call Me Back (sticklers will now point out that the word Back is superfluous, but hey, I’m old-fashioned).  Even the rest of the blah-de-blah of the typical voicemail could be saved for after the return call anyway.

I love texting.  I love it for coordinating quick plans.  I love it for promising to return a call, even while on another call.  I love it for notifying someone I’m late, but en route.  I love it when I need to tell someone I can’t take their call because I’m on the bus, and I don’t want to be one of those bus cell phone people who carry on at length about inane things that nobody, caller included, cares about but the call must go on, heaven forbid an 18-27 year old sit on a bus for 20 minutes without talking to someone about nothing at all.

Texting is more productive too.  Time required to leave a “call me back” message AND listen to it?  Over a minute.  Texting the same thing? Seconds.  And if you don’t have an iPhone, how do you even know who those voicemails are from anyway? It’s a useful tool for informing people about things, whether it’s your followers on Twitter, or yourself on kwiry (disclosure: they are a client of mine).  Texting blows away Facebook poking for a “quick hi”.  It’s probably a great way for kids in school to cheat these days, although I have to assume those days are numbered.  I used to receive Habs score updates through texting (but I subscribed to the hockey package and it kept ruining my games!), and others get stock quotes through it.

Voicemail, on the other hand, is really not good for much.  Sure there are some messages that a text would be quite awkward to send.  I wonder if the future may hold for the transition from “we have to talk” (the worst four words in the English language) to “we have to text”?  For me, I’ll take a quick text over a long voicemail any day.  C U later!

Why are Google's SMS services unreliable?

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When I switched to a Mac, I couldn’t find any calendaring system I liked, so I moved over to Google Calendar (or, as the guys in my office call it, GooGooCow).  Took a while to get used to, and I still don’t understand why they don’t mark full-day events as actually “busy” data, but that’s neither here nor there.  One ridiculously useful feature they introduced a few months ago was the ability to get SMS reminders.  Now my $49 Samsung phone is in synch with my calendar (and it does video, all for much less than $499).

The combo was great, as 10 minutes before any appointment I’d get a text message on my phone.  All was good in the world.

Until about 3 weeks ago.  When it started getting unreliable.

Now, I get some alerts long after events are over.  I get others just as events begin.  Some I don’t get at all.

Which means I have to go look for a new solution, because in the world of alerts/reminders, unreliability is about as bad a problem as anything I could imagine.  It’s weird too, seeing as how it’s (1) a very easy technology, and (2) Google usually scales well.  Very very annoying.  I think the only worse solution would be hiring Britney Spears as my administrative assistant.  Yes, I went there.

Coming Up For Air?

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Had a fun morning keeping up with the Apple keynote from afar (though Mathew Ingram’s take on it was one of my favorites). I don’t really care that much about the online movie rentals topic, I’m sure others have that one cold. I don’t think Apple TV 2 (point oh!) will do much better than the dot-com version (what was with the madhouse cheering when he announced it had surround sound? hello, 1992 called, it wants it’s sound technology back). People just don’t want another box that has roughly the same content as their cable box. I think they should’ve put a Blu-Ray drive in it, then allowed it to do the “virtual drive” thingy (so smart!) back to the Air. Or at least have a Blu-Ray version. People would buy an iBluRay Steve, I promise. Then again, we’ll buy iDoggiePoop too…

Onto the Air. Wow. It’s well done, I must say (and far from useless, but nice linkbaiting there Devin!). Here’s my quick take on it, without having used one personally, starting from the dislikes to the likes:

TERRIBLE: 80GB hard drive? Seriously? Is that a joke? It’s one thing on my rapidly-getting-outdated MacBook, but in the newest of the new, it’s too small. My only hope is this is due to excess inventory from iPods, and they’ll bump it up to the 160GB version soon. And I’m not even going to address the 64GB SSD option, as $3K is out of the question in my eyes.

BAD: micro-DVI (mini-DVI was bad enough, come on!), no removable battery (but as a friend observed, I don’t have a spare battery for my MacBook either – I just hate not even having the option), lack of ExpressCard or built-in EVDO (that AT&T deal isn’t really paying off in this regards), price (it’s not outrageous, but it’s steep for what you truly get).

AVERAGE: expandability (I know there’s only one USB, but with a Bluetooth mouse, I think it’s fine), no optical drive (I just don’t think it really matters that much anymore, but I might be a little optimistically naive. That said, Apple did take the first step to kill the 3.5″ floppy…), missing Ethernet (ditto)

GOOD: screen, iSight, battery life (5 hours promised is like a *real* 3.5 hours, which is perfect).

GREAT: size (duh), weight, keyboard, touchpad (I knew they’d extend the gestures beyond the iPhone).  It might look like the “great” list is much shorter than the bad ones, but I felt those needed more explanation!

All in all, this is a very very impressive laptop. I believe CEOs, marketing execs, and traveling salespeople all across the country are buying it. I don’t agree with conjecture that it’ll cannibalize existing MacBook (or Pro) sales, I feel this is yet another arsenal in the Apple inventory as they slowly climb in laptop market share. Remember – the future of computer sales is all about laptops, and the more they offer in that category, the better that future looks.

As for will I buy one? Decent odds. If the HDD was 160GB I’d be a lot closer (for the record, I have a MacBook with an 80GB hard drive that is constantly full). I feel like it’s a step up, but not a big one, from what I have today. The biggest thing that is holding me back is the concern that they’ll end up revving the MacBook Pros with the new screen and touchpad in the coming months and I’ll have buyer’s remorse about it. I’m on the verge of the pre-order right now, will probably decide in the next 48 hours or so.

Full disclosure: I became an Apple shareholder today.

Technology Predictions for 2008

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I’ve seen lots of Top 10 lists on the subject, and I’ve decided to try a different format for my own prognostications. Instead of by rank, I’ll do a list by industry.  Also, I have way more than 10 predictions to make.

TV Technology

  • Every major cable company will increase it’s rates by more than 3%. Nobody will complain, and our government will (again) fail to protect us from them.
  • A resolution above 1080p starts appearing in demos and labs, I’d predict a bump up into the 4000 vertical lines space.
  • Bluray and HD-DVD continue to duke it out while consumers continue to not care.
  • One of Hulu, Joost, etc get integrated into the Xbox 360 and/or PS3.
  • Google launches “Android for Set-Top Boxes” but gains little traction in the foreseeable future.
  • Anyone who is not a telephone company that tries to launch an IP-streaming set top device has a very rough year.
  • Despite near-constant predictions of their demise, TiVo makes it through another year, possibly getting acquired (by DirecTV, Comcast, Netflix, Blockbuster, or someone out of the blue like Amazon or eBay).

Portable Devices That Are Not Cell Phones

  • Zune 3.0 launches. It’s very very good. Further, iPod’s market share dips, although they still have an increase in overall unit sales (in other words: the pie gets bigger faster than their sales do). That said, a new iPod is even more betterer than all previous versions, making everyone who recently bought a prior generation a wee bit annoyed, but gosh that Steve Jobs is so charming they just don’t care. After all, that’s technology!
  • At least two major camera vendors introduce integrated wifi cameras, but no more than one uses an open service, the rest have some proprietary, closed, annoying-to-use system. Ideally one of them buys Eye-fi.
  • Digital picture frames continue to grow in market share, but still don’t “tip” into the mainstream.
  • More companies introduce e-book readers despite general malaise in the category. Kindle II is launched with mild improvements.

Enterprise Services

  • I have no clue, I don’t follow the space. Hello, this is a consumer tech blog!

Computers

  • Apple’s new laptops will include an ultramobile, a tablet, and a “desktop replacement” OR a “gaming model” (they may combine the first two). Enhancements will include a card reader, 3G access as a built-in option, and new gestures. Market share continues to climb.
  • Microsoft continues to spin about how amazing Vista is. Michael Gartenberg’s observations are probably the most poignant as to why it isn’t.
  • Asus or Dell acquires or merges with one of HP, Acer, Toshiba, or other “meh” PC maker.
  • Sony continues to make subpar Vaio laptops. And for the last time (I think) in 2007: don’t buy the Sony Vaio VGN-SZ4xx series laptops, they are just plain terrible. I’ve now had the chance to voice my discontent directly to the Vaio PR team (at Ruder Finn) who have yet to write me back on the topic.
  • Nobody makes my awesome dual-screen laptop concept, thus leaving me the opportunity to make zillions one day.

Social Networking

  • Facebook continues to get backlash from the media and tech community, meanwhile its user base continues to skyrocket. Further, they hire another 1000 people, yet only make modest improvements to the site itself. I’d add a 33% chance that they “pull a Netscape” and go after the desktop or the browser or some other place they really don’t belong.
  • Randomly pick some names from the huge list of other social networking sites and some of them merge.
  • Adults who didn’t grow up with social networking services experience burnout of being bitten by zombies after a few months, and many stop checking in four times per day. Those who went to school during the Facebook era continue to complain about all the old fogies (like me) polluting their sacred resting ground. They also continue to put radically inappropriate pictures of themselves online, blissfully unaware of the interviewing process.

Mobile Tech

  • A few Android-powered phones ship, but not as many as the tech community would like to see. Again showing why the Razr can utterly dominate the market despite a closed architecture and terrible user interface.
  • Apple launches the iPhone 3G, the iPhone nano, and the iPhonePro. Ok, I’m not 100% sure on the third, but I am betting on the first two. Also, one of these new phones comes unlocked OR on a carrier other than AT&T.
  • Some major lawsuit occurs between a carrier and either a cable company or a broadcaster, all about mobile video rights. All parties involved appear as nothing but greedy to outsiders.
  • Something new comes out in the phone space that’s more astounding than the iPhone. It’s possibly: uber-small, has a radically better battery life, does something funky like synchs with the Wii, or works with all US carriers.

Gaming

  • With lots of stealth, a new console comes to market. It might only be a moderate shift from a prior model, or possibly be a whole new entrant.
  • Rock Band 2 and 3, and Guitar Heros 4, 5, 6, and “Eddie Van Halen” editions come out, however nobody licenses the Harmonix engine to make “Jazz Trio”.
  • Someone comes up with a really impressively new concept for the Wii. Good odds, however, that they wrap it inside a crappy game.
  • More really amazing HD gaming occurs, continuing to drive HD adoption faster than the meager channels the cable companies try to placate us with, despite the fact that they raise prices again. Did I already say that?

Web Services/Misc

  • A wide swath of “Web 2.0” companies will go dark, primarily out of an inability to either figure out a business model for their product, or an inability to successfully market their service outside of the Bay Area.  They will quickly be forgotten and replaced by new ones with even goofier sounding names like Froobooloo.com.
  • No major Wimax deployments occur.
  • The digital transition date looms, starts creating a lot of media hype a la Year2000 mania.
  • RFID continues to be a fun topic for the media, but all that happens is Walmart continues to make small vendors spend loads of money for the privelege of selling there.
  • Bloggers fret about not being recognized as “press”, yet continue to spend too much time/energy gossiping about other bloggers, an activity the general public remains disinterested in and doesn’t give extra respect/credibility for.  This circular logic is baffling, I know.
  • We lose even more rights to big media, because few Americans are willing to take even the tiniest steps to do anything about it.  PLEASE PROVE ME WRONG (start here)!
  • I still don’t Twitter.

See you in 366 days to see how I scored!

kwiry launches a useful texting service

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A year ago at this time I was mocking anyone my age who was texting. Today, virtually all of my peers use it on a more-than-daily basis. In fact, when I was moderating the recent Under the Radar Mobility event, I polled the (heavily biased) audience on their text use. Over 95% of hands went up when asked if they text, and the same amount stayed up when asked if they text for business-oriented purposes. Texting: not just for 15-year-old high school kids anymore.

I’ve tried a lot of mobile services, honestly I don’t like many of them. I’m not into lifecasting and I don’t need a morning horoscope, so the only extensibility I’ve done with my phone (Samsung uch740 – love it) is downloading a few games. Tetris is still the champ, and Transformers was a disappointment. When a friend of mine asked me to get involved with kwiry, my first step was to give a bit of a personal litmus test to their service. I liked it from the first time I tried it, and am pleased to see them launch today (official press releases are here and here).

Mid-post disclosure: Stage Two Consulting is doing marketing consulting for kwiry.

As you can read from other reviews (Engadget Mobile, VentureBeat, Geek.com, mocoNews, MobileCrunch, bub.blicio.us, GoMo News, The Unwired) kwiry is a service that lets you use your cell phone (no fancy iPhone needed) to text reminders to yourself. Once you’ve texted something, it’s waiting for me back at my computer in my email or saved online at kwiry.com, along with instant search results and some sharing/social networking features. If you are wondering when that’s useful, think about all the times you are out and about and don’t have a computer with you – odds are good you have your cell phone!

Enough of ‘the pitch’ – I’ve been using kwiry personally ever since meeting Ron Feldman and his team. It’s useful to me because unfortunately I’ve become ridiculously forgetful in recent years (which I, in a moment of irony, blame entirely on my cell phone). I also like the fact that it follow my normal lifestyle. I am used to texting, and I’m used to being online and checking out my various sites and feeds. With kwiry I don’t have to change any of that, and to me, that’s a big win for adopting any new service, product, or technology.

Verizon customers who care about privacy, read this.

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I’ve been a Verizon customer since they were GE Wireless in the late 90s. They have the best service and network as far as I can tell. I wish there were better CDMA phones out there, and I think they price gouge out the wazoo (sp?). But my plan allows my wife and I to make calls into Canada as well as make/receive calls while there with no additional fees. Also, a lot of my friends are VZ customers, so all our calls to each other are free. Fits my lifestyle just dandy, and frankly I’m not really trying to sell ya on them.

Every now and then a brand you know/trust/like does something that one might call… hmm, what’s the word for it… appalling?

Verizon is in the midst of launching a new program that basically lets them illegally sell ads on your mobile phone. Yes, one more time, it’s illegal (well, kinda, but doesn’t that just jump out at you when I put it that way?), and it’s on your phone. Now you might think this would be part of some new service that you have to sign up for or something. It’s not. And worse, you opt-in by default, and have to call them (1-800-333-9956) to opt-out. If you are a Verizon customer, take a pause and make the call – it’s all automated and takes about 45 seconds.

To call this vexing is a bit of an understatement. I recommend reading more here on how you can contact the FCC to complain yourself. Also (thanks to gethuman.com) here’s their customer service number: 1-800-922-0204.

2nd Annual Mobile Rules! Competition

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Well, last year it was called Web2Mobile, but now it’s called Mobile Rules, but it’s the same thing.  FinNode is sponsoring a competition to help promote some innovation in the mobile space.

Got a cool idea for a mobile app (heck, maybe even a non-iPhone one)?  Sign up here.

Personally, I’m hoping to see some intelligent use of social networking and location-based services.  Too many terrible uses of these technologies in the mobile world to-date.  I don’t need something that tells me my friend is ten feet away from me, or shows me the closest gas station when I don’t ask for it.  Bring my calendar into play live.  Figure out the traffic ahead of time for my route and SMS me if I should take a detour on the way somewhere.  Let me know how many parking spaces are available in a garage nearby when I’ve already bought tickets to the movie in a close proximity.  C’mon, make my life better!

Meanwhile, I’ll reserve the next 160 characters for a mobile update:  shutting down now to grab a drink in the bar downstairs.

Banning drivetexting is costly and pointless

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Read a few articles (well, mostly reprints of a Reuters piece which seems to be sponsored by a startup – but thats the news these days, right?) this week on the topic of 89% of Americans say texting while driving should be banned, despite the fact that 57% of them admit to doing it. Sounds to me like about 50% of the people feel guilty about the fact that they text while driving, but don’t really want to change anything.

Let me do a brief disclaimer before the anonymous commenters go nuts on me: I agree that texting while driving is not just dangerous, but downright stupid.

Here’s the deal: doing any brain-intensive activity while driving is problematic. It turns out that humans simply aren’t good at having a “complex, intense conversation” (scroll down to the end) and usng the steering wheel and brake pads at the same time. This actually doesn’t surprise me when I think about it, since I’ve found I can’t really do anything at the same time as having a serious conversation (other than pace or chew my nails). As an interesting aside here, the reports similarly show that intense conversation with a passenger can be just as problematic (the important difference being, a passenger is more likely to notice traffic than the person on the other end of the call).

In my opinion (read: not based on some stat/fact), what it comes down to is the issue that most drivers refuse to change their behaviors while using a phone (or at least the ones I see). I see people cruising the 101 at 80mph, phone in hand. I see drivers on busy streets during rush hour glancing down at their phone to make a call.

I’ll now address the other issue: legislation. How on Earth do you “ban texting”? Picture being pulled over for it. In that much time, anyone “good” at texting has erased their phone’s outbox, so the only proof a cop would have is accessible by subpoenaing your cell phone records (yup, one more invasion of privacy). So logistically, every attempt to penalize would require cops to spend more time dealing with paperwork and lawyers, and less time protecting me from bad people. Wonderful.

In my opinion, the only possible solution is to ban drivers from holding cell phones, period. This would be (1) safer, and (2) enforceable (and hey, the Irish do it!). Cop sees a driver with a phone, no questions asked, $50 (or whatever) fine and a point on the record. Anything else is, for lack of a better word, silly.

Analyst Misleading People on iPhone switching

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Saw this headline “The iPhone Made People Switch To AT&T” then read this article “About 25 percent of iPhone buyers are ‘switchers’ to AT&T“. Here’s a quote:

“We find these numbers impressive, showing that a fair amount of customers are willing to pay high early cancellation fees (~$125-$200) to get out of their existing service contracts for an iPhone,” analyst Shaw Wu wrote in the report.

Now, Mr Wu’s job is to get people to buy Apple shares until it hits the price target he’s set ($165). That is what he is paid to do. So writing a comment like that probably makes sense, again, given his job.

Let’s establish a couple of baselines here, shall we?

  1. Most people who bought an iPhone in week one were unlikely to have “saved up for it” or put it on layaway. A $500 phone is bought by those with enough financial resources to make it a non-decision.
  2. Most people who bought it in week one had to have it. Whether they are “early adopters” or just wanted to be part of the moment in history (and it most certainly was one), it was an entirely deliberate act.

If you accept those truths, then is saying “oh, and about 25% had to spend an extra $200” a big deal? No, it is not. In fact, it’s fairly obvious. To this segment, the act of switching carriers was no bigger than the batch of people who did it to get the first Razr.

This is NOT indicative of the masses, and Mr Wu’s claim of how he “expects iPhone to bring smart phone technology into the mainstream” is another piece of manipulation I find frustrating. There are over 100 MILLION smartphones in use today.

It’s fairly clear to just about everyone right now that the iPhone is exciting, and is a great sign of the power of Apple’s brand as well as what happens when you make good products – people want them. For those who’ve misread my previous posts, I absolutely agree it’s an impressive device, just not the one I want (although my terrible experience with my Sony Vaio VGN-SZ460N is certainly making me open to buying a Macbook these days).

I’ll make two predictions about the iPhone market moving forward:

ONE: If the current rate of switching carriers by breaking contract is 25%, it’ll be less than half of that by the end of the year. People may switch out of contract, but I think the massive wave of this part is done.

TWO: Everybody falls into one of these three categories:

  1. Owns an Iphone
  2. Doesn’t own one, but has already decided they will buy one, are just waiting for some trigger factor (money, end of contract, seeing a friend use it, etc)
  3. Doesn’t own one, but has already decided they will not buy one, for whatever reasons.

I don’t think anyone else is really on the fence anymore, and I doubt that a lot of people who have already decided against it will switch. I was wrong about my iPhone-eBay predictions, we’ll see how I do this time!

Why Apple will NOT Take Over the wireless industry

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In response to the article How Apple Will Use The iPhone To Take Over The Wireless Industry, I’m opening by saying “take over” is a ludicrous claim.  Do you have any idea the sheer volume of mobile handsets sold worldwide?

Further, there are a lot fewer people influenced by style and experience in the phone industry than in others.  The Razr (aka the most successful cell phone of all time) moved 50M units in 4 years.  And that’s been THE trendy phone to-date, and you can get them for next-to-nothing already.

But I’ll keep going, the turnover rate in mobile phones in the US is under two years and dropping.  In countries like Hong Kong it’s hovering just over 3 months.  So Apple has to not only have the “best” phone (already questionable), but they must sustain that position continuously.

Also (I’m on a roll here), don’t forget that the mobile OS industry is much less locked-down than the PC industry, where the only competition takes 5 years to put out a terrible upgrade to their OS.  There are 4 other solid mobile operating systems for manufacturers to choose from, all of which allow for tremendous device flexibility.

Finally, unlike the PC industry which operates on margins so bad that a single tech support call makes a PC unprofitable, there’s plenty of money in mobile.  LG, Samsung, Moto, and Nokia (to name a few) will not bend-over quite as peacefully as Compaq, Dell, Gateway, and Sony (you know Sony, right, makers of my hunk-o-laptop?) have to the competition.

Will Apple be a player in the mobile space? Definitely.  Will they utterly dominate it the way they do the music space? I have to say it’s possible, but I highly doubt it.

I have to remember to write a blog post talking about domain expertise and the difference between the Web world and the device world.