Imagine that!
Fragmentation
Nov 10, ’09
8:36 PM
…One of the main reasons why UIs are unequally inferior are not only the way you build apps (open vs. closed hw/sw system) and the SDK itself but also marginal to non-existing UI standards, no ready-made drag & drop UI items, variations in carrier- & device firmware, hard- & software input, screen sizes, international customizations, modded phones, rooted phones and last but not least completely different expectations among users and the linux’ish target group itself. in a nutshell: beautiful mess. obviously, all these reasons eat up a huge pile of time that one could better spend with improving UX and polishing the interface. those who started early with android development have learned and are still learning it the hard way, just like they did with win 3.1 back in the days.
Bad(a)
Nov 9, ’09
8:35 PM
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/11/09/samsung.may.deal.microsoft.severe.blow
This prediction says that WinMo and Symbian are out at Samsung. Not a big surprise there.
The real news is some new “proprietary” OS is to take a majority share of the portfolio moving Android out of the picture gradually after 2011.
You will infer from my previous comments that the reason any deep pocketed vendor would shun Android is the same as why they would shun WinMo: no “control” over the whole product and hence no differentiation vis-a-vis an integrated competitor.
The Android devotees would then have to depend on their platform reaching critical mass without Nokia, Samsung, Apple, Palm and RIM, all of which will be shipping integrated products. LG got bought off by Microsoft and they will wallow in the mire.
Where does that leave Android? Moto and SE? They barely make up 10% of all devices and negligible smartphone share today and both are borderline going concerns.
That just leaves HTC, which shipped 80% of all WinMo. My bet is that they will ship 80% of Android, but that still tops them out at 10% share WW.
Looking at the platform game top-down and bottom-up you get the same story.
One Hundred Million
Nov 9, ’09
8:32 PM
On April 9th, 2007 Apple announced that the 100 millionth iPod had been sold, making the iPod the fastest selling music player in history. The first iPod was sold five and a half years earlier, in November 2001.
Three months after that 100 millionth iPod, Apple sold the first iPhone.
My prediction is that sometime next year Apple will announce the 100 millionth iPhone OS device sold, making the iPhone the fastest selling platform in history. The iPhone will have been on the market for three years.
As of now there are at least 57 million iPhone/iPod touch devices in the field. This season there are likely to be over 15 million more sold. The bar to clear is therefore 28 million next year which seems achievable by Q3.
It goes without saying that 100 million contiguously addressable devices makes it the largest such device platform, but it may make it so by an order of magnitude.
Maemo
Nov 8, ’09
8:29 PM
Insipid and irrational politics are symptomatic to a company trapped by rigidity of response to asymmetric attack (and you can quote me on that.)
Nokia, the world’s leader in total mobile phone sales seems to be having new problems deciding on its OS strategy. There were some murmurings about embracing Android last summer, but Nokia seems to have decided against it. Stefan Constantinescu had this to say about the results of Nokia World 2009:
“The [new] software, Maemo 5, is a pain in the ass for developers since Nokia has admitted in public that Maemo 6 will come out in a year and it will break compatibility due to a switch from the GNOME environment to Qt. The browser, built on top of Mozilla technology, the same code that powers Firefox, is a step away from WebKit, the browser engine that powers Safari in the iPhone, the browser in Symbian, the browser in Nokia’s dumbphone OS known as S40, the browser in Android and soon the browser in RIM BlackBerry devices. Why is Nokia supporting something contrary to what the industry has already accepted as best in class? What’s the strategy?”
Technical mistakes and internal politics can sink a company in an intense competitive environment. Mr. Constantinescu didn’t perceive a coherent strategy. There may not be one.
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/iphone_competitor_forecast_stormy_with_a_chance_of_fail/
