> In fact, Nokia, Samsung and LG combined sold roughly 400M mobile handsets worldwide in the first half of 2010 with a combined value share of 32% of handset industry profits, while Apple sold roughly 17M units over the same time period and captured an estimated 39% of industry profits, or greater than the top three global handset OEMs combined. Apple leads the industry in every metric except for unit share… Apple figured out a long time ago that you can easily make money without having the most popular product. Just make sure you have the most profitable product. And profitable doesn’t necessarily mean “most expensive” either.

Personally, I think market share is a crock. The method of counting is always skewed. With PCs, they count all sorts of products, like cash registers at supermarkets, and other types of machines that Apple doesn’t even make, as PCs. And they compare Apple with every other manufacturer combined, since all those other manufacturers make Windows machines. You rarely see comparisons between Apple sales and Dell sales, for instance.

For this reason, most people still believe that only about 5% of people have Macs in their houses. That’s never been true, and is far less true today than it was ten years ago. Macs are still far from the majority, but they have a lot more share than we’re led to believe.

With phones, every single type of Android phone is counted as one item vs. the one iPhone. As if Android phones really had that much in common. They never show you a chart with the Droid X vs. the iPhone. Or the Nexus One vs. the iPhone. Any such chart with any other single device would be an embarrassment next to the iPhone.

Sooner or later, all these other manufacturers are going to figure out that even with the free Android, they still can’t make a whole lot of money on phone sales, no matter how many they sell. The only company benefitting from Android is Google. It’s not a mutually beneficial relationship to HTC, Motorola, etc.

Some are saying that soon the iPhone will shrink down to a 5% market share, just like the Mac. Even if that were true, Apple would still make plenty enough profit to keep making iPhones. But it won’t be true, because Android phones (and Windows 7 phones, and RIM phones, etc.) can’t beat the iPhone on price. At least not by much. Phones are pretty much $200 with a 2-year contract, no matter which phone you buy. So why would people not choose an iPhone?

The price difference was the leading factor to PC dominance throughout the 90s.

With the iPad, the competition is still trying to figure out how to react. Samsung seems to be resorting to locking people into another 2-year commitment in order to appear to be price competitive. I’m not so sure people are going to fall for that. If manufacturers can’t figure out how to beat Apple’s $499 entry price without a contract, Apple is going to enjoy another year of dominance in the tablet market in 2011. Even before you factor in the improvements Apple will make with the next gen iPad early next year.

> The consumer buying advice group [announced](http://blogs.consumerreports.org/electronics/2010/09/apple-iphone4-free-bumper-cases-program-ending-finishing-dropped-calls-antenna-design-issue-problem-iphone-4-cases-giveaway.html) Monday on its official blog that it continues not to recommend the iPhone 4. Apple’s decision to discontinue the iPhone 4 free case program was seen as “less consumer-friendly.” > > “Putting the onus on *any* owners of a product to obtain a remedy to a design flaw is not acceptable to us,” wrote *Consumer Reports*. I’ve questioned Consumer Reports’ motives on this issue before, but at this point I don’t think it’s a question any longer. They have shown their true colors and have lost credibility, as far as I’m concerned.

Note that Apple is still giving a free bumper to anyone who asks for one; the only difference is that now you have to specifically ask for one. And the reason for this is that most people don’t need the bumper, because most people either don’t have the antenna issue or are buying other cases on their own. So why would Apple still give away millions of cases to people who don’t want or need them?

The entire antenna kerfuffle has proven to have cost Apple very few iPhone 4 sales, and there are no signs of long-term reputation damage to the company. The only loser here is Consumer Reports, who is still flogging this story for reasons that defy comprehension.

> A new release from Web traffic firm Net Applications has revealed that iOS share [overtook Linux](http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=9&qpcustom=iOS,Linux&sample=36) in July, when it represented 1.06 percent of all Web traffic, verus the 0.93 share of Linux. Apple’s mobile platform grew even more in August, when it represented 1.13 percent, compared to a shrinking share for Linux, down to 0.85 percent. So much for Open always beats closed. Apple’s 3-year old mobile platform is outperforming Linux’s decades-old desktop platform.

By the way, “Open beats Closed” is a canard. It’s never been true of any platform. Ever. Windows was not an open platform. Linux has never been commercially successful. My guess is this is why Google is making more and more closed deals with Verizon and others lately.

> Google Android evangelist Tim Bray responded to Case’s concerns in a [post](http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/08/licensing-server-news.html) on Google’s official Android blog. He says that the sample verification code supplied with the LVL framework wasn’t really intended to be used unmodified. Because it was created to demonstrate how to use the framework, it was deliberately written with an emphasis on simplicity rather than robustness. Bray also contends that the sample applications compromised by Case didn’t use robust code obfuscation, which would have made it considerably more difficult to compromise the software. > > “The licensing service provides infrastructure that developers can use to write custom authentication checks for each of their applications. The first release shipped with the simplest, most transparent imaginable sample implementation, which was written to be easy to understand and modify, rather than security-focused,” Bray wrote. “Some developers are using this sample as-is, which makes their applications easier to attack. The attacks we’ve seen so far are also all on applications that have neglected to obfuscate their code, a practice that we strongly recommend. We’ll be publishing detailed instructions for developers on how to do this.” > > Bray’s points suggest that LVL offers more effective protection when it is used properly and developers don’t just copy and paste Google’s contrived example validation code, but he also acknowledged that the framework is not mature yet and still has room for improvement. Same old story from the Google evangelists: “Nothing is our fault. Everything is your fault.”

This, I believe, is yet another reason why developers are not flocking to Google. And I’m not convinced Google cares.

Essentially, what Google is saying to developers is the same thing it has always said: Everything is your responsibility. If you want security in your apps, build it yourself. We’ll hand you some sample code, but the heavy lifting is up to you. We don’t care if people pirate your intellectual property. As long as they click on ads.

Understand, Tim Bray is a key spokesperson for Google, not some low-level idiot with a Twitter account. And he literally said that the security code for Android “was written to be easy to understand and modify, rather than security-focused.” The security is not security-focused?

And people still take Android seriously?

Whatever you may think about the future of mobile technology, I can assure you that security is going to be THE issue in a couple of years. Hackers are already starting to target all the major mobile platforms; Google is handing them the keys instead of installing new locks.

Apple, in stark contrast, locks down the security of iOS so hard that it often gets criticized for being a complete control freak. And that is probably true, but still. At least as a user, I get the sense that they care a little about me.

I’m not a developer (though I do some work for one), but when given the choice between a security protocol that’s baked into the platform that I essentially get for free (minus a few hassles), and one that I have to create myself from scratch—that’s a pretty easy financial decision.

This notion that Google is going to sell a billion Android phones and then suddenly a market for software will appear is complete craziness. And as I said before, I don’t think Google even cares. They want ads, and ads in apps are proving very ineffective, anyway. What Google really wants is to drive everyone to the browser again, which is clearly not what the users want.

So again, someone remind me how Google is supposed to win this battle in the long run? They are poised to be the least cohesive, most insecure platform with the least appealing apps. And their phones aren’t even cheaper than the competition. So where’s the world domination part come in?

> 7) 24-hour return rate – I have read multiple stories that the 24 hour return rate hurts sales.  In a way, it does but it’s not bad.  On average I get a 5% return rate a day.  However, I would rather have the ability for users to test applications and then decide whether to keep them or not.  One of the reasons why iPhone apps may generate more is because of users buying stupid apps and having no way to refund them.  This is a reason why fart apps do so well on iOS and not on Android.  Most of them will be refunded.  Apple does not dare to implement such a feature for the iPhone knowing for sure this will hurt app sales.  They try to protect revenue stream for developers and not for users.  As a developer, you won’t care, but it’s bad business to always try to trick users into buying apps. Very interesting article from an Android developer. I keep complaining that we never hear from Android developers about their success stories selling apps. This guy has obviously done fairly well, though it appears that he is on the extreme high-end of success for this platform. Way above the norm. And yet he’s making nowhere near what a successful iPhone developer would make.

Still, I was convinced that NO ONE was making money as an Android developer, and that’s obviously not true.

His thoughts in the quoted passage above about the 24-hour return rate are off the mark, I believe. I don’t think anyone tries to trick users into buying fart apps on iOS. It’s pretty obvious from the previews and the reviews whether or not an app is any good. And Apple does a fairly good job of rejecting apps that claim to be something they are not. Sure, there are apps I’ve downloaded that I end up not using much, but with a $.99 price point for most of those, it’s hard to get worked up about it. I don’t think a 24-hour return period would make that much of a difference to most users. Meanwhile, Google’s lack of concern for the revenue stream of developers is a serious issue that continues to keep most serious programmers away from this platform.

I’m sure this developer would argue that his success is a clear sign that Android is going to be a viable platform for developers for years to come, and that it’s only going to get better. But from what I’ve been reading lately, it appears that Google is poised to kick Android developers to the curb in favor of a web-only Chrome platform as soon as it can possibly get away with it. So I’d say the development ecosystem for Android is pretty far from a good investment of a developer’s time.

> “As long as it’s a good-enough product, they should have a > fighting chance,” said Kumar. That’s a bold endorsement if I ever heard one. As long as you make something that’s just good enough not to suck, RIM, you’ll do fine.

When is the tech world going to learn that the era of Microsoft is over? Being just good enough isn’t going to cut it in a market dominated by an Apple product.

We don’t live in a Mac vs. PC world anymore. It’s iPod vs. every other MP3 player. You have to design great products to compete.

And I seriously hope that’s an internal code name for the product, not the actual shipping name. Blackpad? That’s even worse than iPad.

> How bad is mobile Flash? When I went to ABC.com and tried to play a clip, I waited five minutes while the player said “loading.” During that time, it was nearly impossible to scroll around the page or tap objects on it. Eventually, I scrolled up to see a message that was previously obstructed and said  ”Sorry. An error occurred while attempting to load the video. Please try again later.” It gets worse… I’m going to let this one speak for itself. If you’re still holding out hope that Flash is going to survive in the long term, or that it will ever be a successful part of any mobile platform, go ahead and read the article linked above.

> Apple’s “slow” turnaround time doesn’t come without rewards, though; Nissan told the *WSJ* that iAd “has driven exceptional results to date.” This sentiment is mirrored by some members of the Mac developer community (who can now take advantage of Apple’s “iAd for Developers” program); several developers told Ars that they have generated impressive income through iAd so far. Of course, the developers don’t benefit from weeks’ worth of Apple’s creative efforts, but it’s clear that the ads are making an impact—once they run. Once again, there’s some disparity between an Ars Technica headline and the story’s conclusion.

The headline for this piece should have been “Apple takes advertisers to school on how to make effective ads.” But that wouldn’t have generated as many clicks.

This is the classic Apple agenda at work. Rather than dumping hundreds of crappy ads on users and failing to make any real impact, Apple is shaking up the whole industry. If they anger some clients in the process, so be it. If they fail to gain enough support for their new platform, so be it. They do it right, or they don’t do it. That’s how Apple rolls.

My guess is that Apple isn’t interested in entering this market just to add a bullet point to a marketing presentation. They literally want to change ads on mobile devices for the better—something that Google hasn’t managed to do, by the way, despite the fact that Google’s entire future rides on mobile advertising.

> The phone is said to be running [Gingerbread](http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/06/leaked-android-30-details-hint-at-tablet-potential.ars) with a custom, phone-specific skin, and will be able to play a variety of classic PlayStation and PlayStation Portable games digitally. It makes sense, in a way: this would give Sony another way to monetize its existing portable gaming content, and Google’s mobile platform would get a powerful portable gaming boost. Apple is known for its iPhone games, but thus far the Android platform has not enjoyed the same level of support for gaming. It makes sense, I guess, if you want Android to be even more fractured than it already is. So this one Android phone out of the hundreds of models available will run Playstation portable games. Great. How does that help Android get a better reputation as a gaming platform? It’s not like all those PSP games are suddenly going to run on your Nexus One, or Droid X, or Droid Eris, or Incredible, or the G1, etc. These are two different platforms, with very different hardware requirements, being slapped together with some Elmer’s glue and rubber bands.

And I really fail to see the advantage for Sony. If this is their reaction to the popularity of the iPod Touch as a gaming device, they’re pretty much doomed. At least Nintendo tried to differentiate themselves with some interesting, if not cliché, 3D screen technology. This offers no advantage whatsoever over the current PSP or the iPod Touch.

This seems like something a PSP enthusiast dreamed up as his personal Utopia machine. But will it appeal in the general market? I seriously don’t think so.

If this rumor is real, which I’m still not certain it is, my guess is that it was cobbled together without any real thought or investment, which means the entire experience of using it will be as schizophrenic as you might imagine.

For instance. I want to buy a new game for my new device. Where do I go? Do I go to the Android Marketplace, or a special Sony Store? Well, depends on the game, I guess.

Hey, a new software update came out today. Okay. Where do I download it? From Sony or from Google? Or from the carrier? Will Verizon be in charge of whether or not the game portion of my machine gets updated? How is Sony going to feel about that?

Put this one on my “I doubt if it even exists, but even if it does, it’ll be DOA” list. Unless I’m missing something.

> There have been isolated cases of spyware programs that run on the Android platform, an open-source mobile operating system created by Google. But the fake media player application, which Kaspersky dubbed “Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer.a,” is the first one believed to specifically target Android, Kaspersky said. > > “Kaspersky Lab recommends that users pay close attention to the services that an application requests access to when it is being installed,” the company said. “That includes access to premium rate services that charge to send SMSes and make calls.” > > The application is simply called “Movie Player,” according to Lookout, a company that makes mobile phone security and management software. The malware does apparently warn users they may be charged for SMSes if they install it. The SMSes costs “several dollars,” Lookout’s [blog](http://blog.mylookout.com/2010/08/security-alert-first-android-sms-trojan-found-in-the-wild/) said. > > Lookout suggested that Android users check the permissions of the media player applications and revoke any that mention charging for SMSes. The malware may not spread far, however, for a couple of reasons. > > “So far this has only affected Android smartphone users in Russia and only works on Russian networks,” Lookout said. “As far as we know, there is no indication that this app is in the Android Market.” > > Google said in a statement that users see a screen after downloading an application that explains what information and system resources that application can access, such as their phone number or the SMS function. > > “Users must explicitly approve this access in order to continue with the installation, and they may uninstall applications at any time,” Google said. “We consistently advise users to only install apps they trust. In particular, users should exercise caution when installing applications outside of Android Market.” This is the point where most of my readers will expect me to blast Android and praise the iPhone. But to be honest, I’m much more concerned at the increase of malicious software targeting mobile devices in general lately. No platform is completely safe from this stuff.

Apple just released a patch for the iOS (iPad and iPhone/iPod Touch versions) that fixes a gaping hole in mobile Safari that made jailbreaking the device as simple as visiting a web page. (I suggest if you have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch that you install that update immediately.) While some will report this patch as Apple “locking down” people who want to install their own hacks, it would be simply irresponsible for Apple not to plug that hole. What one site uses for a jailbreak, others with more malicious intentions could have used to steal credit card information, run up phone bills, spam contact lists—you name it.

We put our entire lives on our smart phones. It’s an intensely personal device. Which makes it all the more valuable to a thief, or in this case, a hacker. We as users are going to have to take steps to ensure that we protect ourselves as much as possible, which means paying careful attention to what we download, install, etc.

And, yes, I personally believe that Apple’s policy of secure signing ALL software on the iPhone is a bit safer in general than Google’s “install anything you want, even if it’s not from our store” philosophy. But that doesn’t mean iPhone users should be completely oblivious to the possibility of someone slipping something past Apple’s approval system. It’s nice to know that Apple could probably track down anyone who puts malware on the App store, and could not only remove the offending app from the store, but from everyone’s iPhone with the push of a button. But that’s a small consolation once your bank account has already been compromised.

I dread the day when installing virus protection becomes the norm on a mobile device. Most of the time virus scan software does little more than drain battery life and eat processor cycles and can only protect you from known quantities, anyway. I really hope we can avoid that sort of nonsense with better and better built-in security. In the meantime, we’ll all have to practice some common sense if we want to avoid getting hit by these kinds of attacks.

> “The big thing is that people with an iPhone really don’t look anywhere else,” said Entner, for their next smartphone. “It’s like having the most beautiful woman in the world on your arm. Why would you look anywhere else?” This is the big reason why I think that despite Android’s obvious growth this past year, a future where Android “dominates” the market, and the iPhone is relegated to the fringes is highly unlikely.

To date, Android has yet to demonstrate any ability to lure customers away from the iPhone. All of Android’s growth has been at the expense of Microsoft, Symbian, and RIM. The big recent quarter that everyone likes to talk about where Android “outsold the iPhone” was the quarter just BEFORE Apple released the iPhone 4, and even in that quarter, Android just BARELY outsold the iPhone, despite several new models on all four carriers being made available during that quarter.

The only two things holding Apple back from growing even faster than it already has is exclusivity to one carrier in many parts of the world and the inability to make the iPhone 4 fast enough. Once the manufacturing speed catches up to demand, and once we see the iPhone on other carriers (yes, even Verizon eventually), Android will hit the wall, in terms of how much faster it can grow. it will run out of easy prey and have to start making gains on merit.

Anyone can take a sale from Windows mobile at this point. That’s no reason to cook up delusions of grandeur.

Momentum is a good thing. But for the long term, killing the iPhone will be a lot harder than a lot of people think. With the iPad having no competition at all, more and more people are going to be investing in the iOS app garden. And once they’re in there, it’s not going to be easy to get them back out.

So this oversized phone is more expensive than any other Android phone on the market, and yet it’s running an old version (1.6) of the OS?

Alternately, you can think of it as a “small tablet”, in which case it’s more expensive than the cheapest iPad (unless you want to be roped into a two-year contract), with a much smaller screen and not nearly as much choice in high-quality applications.

Oh, and the 3G provider is AT&T.

Exactly who is going to buy this thing? What phone user wouldn’t rather have a Droid X on Verizon, and what tablet user wouldn’t rather have an iPad? Or better yet, a much cheaper iPod Touch?

Apple is going to have a very good holiday quarter this year. They literally have no competition for the iPad, despite all those devices that were demoed at CES BEFORE the iPad was even announced. They sent every other tech company back to the drawing board, and none of them has come up with anything yet.

It astounds me that Dell doesn’t realize that the current iPhone and iPad form factors were carefully chosen for a reason. Something in between like the Streak is good for neither tablet computing nor phone use.

> The RearType paper describes the project as follows: > > > “Our goal is a system that provides the tactile feedback and familiarity of a regular keyboard without cluttering the front of the display, ameliorates the occlusion problem inherent in direct on-screen touch and pen input, does not use the valuable screen real-estate taken up by an on-screen keyboard, leverages users existing skills in touch-typing on a regular physical QWERTY keyboard, and allows for text entry in highly mobile usage scenarios.” > > After building a prototype, the researchers put it through its paces with 12 study participants who were expert QWERTY typists. According to the paper, with one hour of training, typing speed in English averaged 15.1 words per minute, which “was not statistically different from their performance with a touchscreen soft keyboard.” The goal wasn’t to clutter the front of the device, yet there are still more buttons on the front of this device than an iPhone, or even a standard Android device.

And after all this work and research, expert QWERTY typists STILL couldn’t type as fast as I can on a software keyboard? What does that say for the 90% of us who aren’t experts? Can you imagine hunting and pecking on this thing?

At what point do we all just admit that Apple was right, that a physical keyboard on a mobile device is a relic, an old idea beyond which we’ve already moved?

And the biggest issue with this input method, of course, is that it’s completely unusable with one hand. If there’s one thing that Jeff Hawkins from Palm taught us years ago, it’s that any mobile that can’t be used at least in some capacity with a single hand is pretty much a failure. So there’s no way this keyboard would work on a phone of any kind. On a tablet, maybe. But not a phone.

The next big thing in text input will not be just a revamping of the old QWERTY keyboard. No one has figured it out yet, but there’s something much better out there. There has to be.