FWIW, LG Prada II has a real one. As far as I know this phone is only supported overseas, so it's never really been a contender against iPhone.
Posted on 08/02/2010 10:32:17 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It's happening, Apple!
Google's free and open-source Android operating system shot past its competitors last quarter to become the top-selling U.S. smartphone OS, according to research firm Canalys.
Android accounted for 34% of the 14.7 million smartphones sold in the U.S. last quarter, while RIM was 32.1% of the market and Apple was 21.7%, Canalys estimates. That's a huge victory for Google, which was zero two years ago.
Yes, Apple's iPhone 4 didn't launch until the very end of the quarter, and Q3 should be bigger for Apple. But the fact that Google is anywhere near Apple's market share -- let alone halfway above it -- must concern both Apple and RIM.
What does it mean for Apple? It's time to start selling the iPhone at more U.S. carriers, and not just AT&T.
Apple must sell the iPhone at Verizon Wireless, the biggest U.S. carrier, as soon as possible, and potentially at T-Mobile, too. In the U.S. smartphone market, carriers still handle most of the distribution -- Google learned this the hard way when its would-be-disruptor Nexus One store flopped. And now only about a third of iPhone buyers are switching to AT&T from other carriers. So if Apple wants to take the top position in the market, it's going to have to sell the iPhone at more carriers.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Incidentally, Avenir, the LG Prada, has eight buttons and not even a virtual QWERTY keyboard for texting, making it less than a total touchscreen phone.
FWIW, LG Prada II has a real one. As far as I know this phone is only supported overseas, so it's never really been a contender against iPhone.
The LG Prada 2 you show with a physical keyboard was released in May 2009. The original Prada phone was available unlocked for use in the US on T-Mobile for $849, but had to be purchased special order through a Prada dealer and imported from Italy. The Prada 2 is also now available unlocked for $219 to $289 from various mail order retailers. . . But still only works on T-Mobile as far as I know.
It's still not a true "smartphone" but the iPhone is sold in Europe where the Lg Prada is sold, so they do compete as phones.
In no particular order of importance, some thoughts:
1. RIM’s problems are three fold: lack of applications, lack of application development platform/environment, lack of video and screen size.
2. RIM’s upside over the other phones are security and crypto, good battery life and a keyboard on the phone rather than a fold-out. They have phones that operate on both CDMA and GSM with the same feature set, unlike the iPhone, which is on only GSM carriers right now. The push technology was always better than what the competition offered, but that issue is becoming a moot point. The big upside on a Blackberry is you can lock the thing down tight as a drum with crypto and memory scrubbing.
3. RIM has a huge challenge in that their OS/platform isn’t intended for a whole lot of third parties to start rolling out applications. Sure, they have a development environment.... and it is about as much fund as hammering nails through your palms in comparison to Apple’s or Google’s environment. Further, the apps you can write are limited by the relatively modest CPU and memory capacity of the Blackberry handsets.
4. RIM is suffering from the issue I spoke of last week or the week before - the “installed base paradox.” They were successful, so they have this big installed base. Alas, the installed base wants all the new whizzy features, but they don’t want ANY breakage to get them.
The longer I developed software, the more and more I hated the “installed base paradox.”
5. All of the above has resulted in a Nielsen survey coming out today (yesterday) that shows that only 42% of current Blackberry users want their next phone to be a Blackberry. RIM is in serious, deep trouble here. They have a pent-up user base waiting to roll off contract to the competition, which means that if the nominal contract is 2 years, they have at most six months to address this issue or they’re toast where they stand right now.
See “Next Desired Smartphone OS” chart. Blackberry users aren’t loyal. iPhone users have very high loyalty and the Android user probably hasn’t had their product long enough to have much opinion firmed up.
IMO, this is an insurmountable problem for RIM now. Six months isn’t enough time to do what they need to do, which is address the third party app development issue. Unless OS 6 contains some huge mega-win tomorrow, I think I know what I’m going to be doing over the next two years - shorting RIMM.
That a hoot. The Apple platform isn’t the most secure, the Blackberry platform is. That’s their chops - security.
I do agree that the Android OS has the best long-term prospects. Cisco is now getting on board the Android OS, and they intend to differentiate themselves from the other Android wireless devices in that cisco’s will have better networking (natch) and be targeted at enterprise/business accounts, and will have much tighter integration with the cisco IP enterprise network.
With that sort of expansion behind Android... that will make things move right along in the next couple of years in terms of integration. The big bucks that will “stick” with RIM will be enterprise accounts that are using RIM’s server functionality. If cisco peels that off of them, then RIM is finished in not just the individual or family phone accounts, but in business as well.
It changes plenty. It's like you saying Google does not charge anyone for using their search engine. Well, by giving away the use of their desktop search engine for free, Google ends up making bilions of dollars in profits from search. They are following the same model with Android for smartphones. In the long term, Google’s business model with Android is going to have more legs as far as making money is concerned. Mobile search has a pretty good chance of generating at least as much revenues the desktop search where Google makes most of their money right now. Meanwhile, Apple is going to continue losing market share to Android smart phones every quarter for the foreseeable furture, and there is really nothing Apple can do about it. Sorry.
Chortle!
Every single smartphone is primarily a cell phone, then a computer. If the cell phone part doesn't work, it's virtually useless (that is why the serious defect with the iPhone 4 created such a stink). Without the cell phone part, you might as well be using a netbook, which has the same wifi that the iPhone has, has a full keyboard, runs full Windows applications, and surfs the internet better than any smartphone.
So, these little articles which purport that they know what can help Apple ...
The world is full of people trying to improve the company that has grown larger than Exxon. Each new game changer Apple introduces is first declared a loser and when that product is an instant hit they start telling us how it can be improved. For some reason, Apple sure gets into a lot of people's heads. They are well represented here on FR.
Apparently it is! Harder than rocket surgery!
Apple's "innovation" in the phone market was the App Store's one-touch install of applications (note that Handango has been around forever, is a huge searchable store of apps for all platforms, but you have to install the app yourself from your computer). Other than that, what - really - did they bring to the table that was new, and hadn't been out for nearly 2 years?
HTC TyTN. Eten M600. Qtek S100. Samsung i700 and E898. Motorola A1000. And there are many others, out since the 2002+ timeline.
Apple made a slick UI and simplified installation of apps. But as far as introducing a new concept or class of 'smartphones'? Not even close. Everything the iPhone could do at its release was already existing from several vendors for at least 18 months or more...
Except, of course, for Microsoft. That would be a step down in margin for them...;)
Chuckle!
You may need to get off the Kool Aide dude.
Exxon mobile market cap = $320.24 Billion
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=XOM
Apple market cap = 240.04 Billion
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=aapl
Appple is not even close.
When it comes to sales and profits, Apple is not even on the same galaxy as Exxon Mobile. In the last quarter alone, Exxon made revenures of a massive $92.5 billion (up 24%)! That's more revenues than Apple makes in the entire year.
On profits, Exxon made a staggering $7.56 billion(nearly double last year's profits) in the last quarter alone.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Exxon-Mobils-2Q-earnings-more-apf-3308008180.html?x=0
Apple is “larger than Exxon” eh?
Will you excuse me while I laugh?
“Droid is a plastic clunky, virus ridden bloatware of a phone with a tiny fuzzy screen. But it is ALL else their is. If you are on Verizon, you CAN’T HAVE the best, so you have to settle”
Samsung Galaxy S phones. Twin brother CPU, better GPU, better screen IMO, 16 gig memory with option to upgrade to 48 gig, free built in navigator with voice input and voice directions.
My wife would have purchased an iPhone if it were on our network. She is now a happy Android user. The longer they put off moving more networks, the more potential users they are going to lose.
Motorola is not the only company building Android phones and there are going to be many options up and down the price spectrum.
Swordmaker:
“LOVE my android!! The only negative is you can’t download I-Tunes, which would be nice for e-book purchases.
Not a big deal for me tho.”
Download the free Kindel app. You have access to the entire Amazon selection. That being said, I have the app and downloaded one book and decided that reading books on a phone is not my cup of tea.
Also look at doubletwist as an iTunes replacement for your music and video. It works like iTunes and will automatically convert all of your non DRM music to a format appropriate for your device.
My droid x call quality is superb too...Motorola was making two-way radios when stevie jobs was probably in diapers. Well a long time ago anyway!
Who needs imemineTunes anyway? I just write music files from desktop to a SD card and the droid x plays them. No need to sync or dnwload
Didn’t Palm bring out touch screen, app running phones in the early 2000’s?
Not that I can find... nor any that are listed in Wikipedia.
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