Who will be the iPad's Orson Welles?

Time’s Managing Editor: iPad Content Awaits ‘Its Orson Welles’ – Digits – WSJ

He compared it to the era after sound first came into motion pictures. For a while many movies were more like filmed plays, until directors really learned to take advantage of the opportunities of the medium. For the iPad, too, “the medium is waiting for its Orson Welles,” Stengel said.


Why Google is headed for trouble

Never mind the gossip and tales of intrigue. Ignore the stories of betrayal and affairs. Forget the animosity and ego tripping.

No, the real reason you should be nervous if you are betting on Google long term is that Schmidt gave his first iPhone away.

By August of 2007 it’s reported that “Schmidt had long ago given up on the Apple handset because he couldn’t stand the on-screen keyboard. His wife had tested a prototype, but didn’t care to keep it. Schmidt, we’re told, ended up giving his iPhone to [his mistress] as a gift”

Here is a guy who has in his hands one of the first iPhones and he treats it with contempt.

He did not get it.

Nor, it seems, does he get the iPad.

Google does not understand where computing is going.

I don’t mean this in a small way. I mean this in a big way.


Symbian Admob impressions grow 22% in a year

Smartphone impressions triple in a year « Asymco

Following up on the previous Admob numbers, it seems that Symbian impressions grew by 22% vs. overall growth of 43%.

In absolute terms, total impressions a year ago for Symbian reached about 1 billion vs. 1.22b in February.

Symbian’s share of requests therefore fell from 43% in February 2009 to 18% in February 2010.


Smartphone impressions triple in a year

link: Smartphone traffic is up 193% in a year – Apple 2.0 – Fortune Brainstorm Tech

What is important to observe is not the share numbers in the link above but the absolute growth and trend.

Doing a bit of algebra from the data Admob provided we can calculate that:

  1. The overall traffic admob handled was 14.1b up from 6.6b a year ago. (114% growth)
  2. Smartphones generated 6.78b impressions in February, up from 2.3b a year ago. (193% growth). The iPhone OS generated 3.4b impressions.
  3. Feature phones generated 4.9b, up from 3.5b (43% growth)

Although it’s dangerous to equate “usage” to these impression numbers, the overall trend is that most of the growth is happening on smartphones. Of those, the iPhone OS and Android are taking 75% share of eyeballs, at least on Admob’s network.

The iPhone platform generated as many impressions in February as all feature phones generated a year ago. It does not seem a stretch to predict that iPhone will overtake all feature phones in overall impressions in the near future.