Author: Horace Dediu

Stop the Presses! RIM Buys own OS Kernel

RIM Buys QNX to Tie Phones to Cars | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.

Seriously, a real operating system. This is their first.

As a (Unix-like real-time) microkernel-based OS, QNX is based on the idea of running most of the OS in the form of a number of small tasks, known as servers. This differs from the more traditional monolithic kernel, in which the operating system is a single very large program composed of a huge number of “parts” with special abilities. In the case of QNX, the use of a microkernel allows users (developers) to turn off any functionality they do not require without having to change the OS itself; instead, those servers are simply not run.

…which is more than can be said for the BlackBerry “OS”.

Source: Wikipedia

Daring Fireball: New iPhone Developer Agreement Bans the Use of Adobe's Flash-to-iPhone Compiler

My reading of this new language is that cross-compilers, such as the Flash-to-iPhone compiler in Adobe’s upcoming Flash Professional CS5 release, are prohibited. This also bans apps compiled using MonoTouch — a tool that compiles C# and .NET apps to the iPhone. It’s unclear what this means for tools like Titanium and PhoneGap, which let developers write JavaScript code that runs in WebKit inside a native iPhone app wrapper. They might be OK. The folks at Appcelerator realize, though, that they might be out of bounds with Titanium. Ansca’s Corona SDK, which lets you write iPhone apps using Lua, strikes me as out of bounds.

via Daring Fireball: New iPhone Developer Agreement Bans the Use of Adobe’s Flash-to-iPhone Compiler.

Nota bene:  Apple will release its own app front end that allows a simpler development environment (than XCode).

Tavis McCourt of Morgan Keegan Predicts iPhone Sales

At the event, CEO Steve Jobs noted that iPhone sales to date now tops 50 million units. Morgan Keegan analyst Tavis McCourt points out in a research note that as of the end of December, sales to date were 41.8 million. Ergo, the company sold at least 8.2 million in the March quarter, he concludes.

Source: Barrons

How can you count on these guys for forecasts about the future when they can’t get the past right?  Total iPhones sold as announced by Apple: 42.484 million.  A more reasonable estimate is here.

iAd adds up to a lot of cash

“The average user spends over 30 minutes every day using apps on their phone. If we said we wanted to put an ad up every 3 minutes, that’s 10 ads per device per day. That would be 1b ad opportunities per day.”

This is going to take some time to sink in over at the Googleplex.  By pushing Android, Google removed themselves from this opportunity.  Jobs continues:

“We do not have any plans to become a worldwide ad agency. We tried to buy a company called AdMob, and Google came in and snatched them from us. We bought Quattro instead. They’re teaching us and we’re learning as fast as we can.”

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I did suggest iAd was coming on Dec. 30 of last year:

I think it’s a certainty that Apple will introduce an ad serving platform for the iPhone (and any tablet) in 2010. This will amount to a checkbox that developers will check when submitting their app to the store. Doing so will allow Apple to place ads on the app in return for a check in the mail to the developer for the impressions.

Apple sells 450,000 iPads in 5 days, users download 3.5 million apps

Apple said Thursday that it has shipped over 450,000 iPads since the device went on sale this past Saturday, spurring 3.5 million app downloads for the new tablet device by its earliest adopters.

via AppleInsider | Apple sells 450,000 iPads in 5 days, users download 3.5 million apps.

Jobs also updated with 600,000 downloads of iBooks.  The first day sales of books was 250k, so it’s keeping a bit above 1 book per device.  First day apps was 1 million, so the app attach rate is now 7.8, well above the 3 from day one.  Keep in mind that the iPhone attach rate grew to over 50 so it’s early days to see how iPhone compares to iPad as an app magnet.

One billion apps downloaded in 93 days

A bit less than one year ago, on April 23rd 2009, Apple reported 1 billion apps downloaded.

158 days later, on September 28th 2009, Apple reported 2 billion apps downloaded.

99 days later, on January 5th 2010, Apple reported 3 billion apps downloaded.

93 days later, on April 8th 2010, Apple reported 4 billion apps downloaded.

The download rate for the past 93 days was 10.7 million apps per day.

Given 85 million iPhones and iPod touches sold, the 4 billion app downloads amount to 47 per device.  (Although that number is likely to be considerably higher due to many iPhones/iPods having gone out of use–an attach rate of well over 50 seems like a good estimate).

Apple pre-announces at least 7.5 million iPhones sold in Q1

Today Steve Jobs stated that 50 million iPhones were sold to date.  According to SEC filings, since about 42.5 million sold as of end of 2009, it follows that about 7.5 million units shipped in the first quarter.

That number represents a 98% y/y increase in units.

Another revolution: a new priority in the BOM

“Conventional notebook PCs are ‘motherboard-centric,’ with all the other functions in the system—-such as the display, the keyboard and audio—-peripheral to the central microprocessor and the main printed circuit board at the core,” Andrew Rassweiler, teardown services manager for iSuppli, said Wednesday. “With the iPad, this is reversed.”

User interface components total 44% of the total bill of materials (BOM).  The display is 26% and the touch assembly is 12%.  Memory is 11% (16G variant), processor is 10%, and case a 4%.  Batteries make up a large part of the rest (37%).