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It's perfect timing to take a revenge against Apple...

Except the specific patents they chose to use against Apple cannot be used as weapons, at least not without potentially serious repercussions. Samsung committed those patents to a patent pool in order to establish an interoperable 3G standard incorporating its ideas. Those patents *must be licensed fairly* to any and all who want to use the 3G standard, under FRAND commitments that Samsung committed itself to.

These patents *cannot* be used to coerce competitors, just because they feel like it.

There are many questions around this; whether Apple is already licensed (as it buys the chips implementing the 3G standard from a licensed chip supplier), or if not, whether Apple refuses to pay if needed, and whether Samsung is offering Fair, Reasonable, and *Non-Discriminatory* terms [1]. It was reported that Samsung wants 2.4% of chip price for each patent asserted [2], utterly outrageous considering there are hundreds of standard essential patents in 3G.

With the tens of thousands of patents Samsung claims to have, surely it could have found something better than this to use as muck to tie up courts? Of course, since Samsung does not create Operating Systems or Application Software and Apple doesn't create wireless communication standards or implement existing standards in chips, there is little to no overlap in their technology creations (Samsung creates hardware components, Apple creates extremely software dependent final products).

So Samsung is reduced to blatant anti-competitive abuse of standards committed patents.

Samsung needs to be ready for an anti-competitive EU investigation if it keeps up this tactic. The result in the Netherlands in less than two weeks, which is looking directly at this question of FRAND patents, should make interesting reading.

``Looking for revenge'' this way is not going to work. Perhaps Samsung should spend that time and money to create unique designs of its own? Remember: it *admitted* to the world that it canned the original Galaxy Tab that was proudly flaunted last Feb, after the iPad 2 was released, in order to make it more like the iPad 2--there is simply no denying that *fact*. And so Samsung invites litigation in various forms (design patents, trade dress, etc). I don't know why people get all up in arms about this. Perhaps we would all be better off today had Apple stayed out of the phone and tablet business? The truth is it is Samsung (and others) who cannot compete on merit [3].

- jtc

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair,_reasonable,_and_non-discriminatory_terms
[2] http://9to5mac.com/2011/09/26/apple-samsung-wants-to-charge-2-4-percent-of-chip-price-for-every-patent/
[3] http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/sep/02/samsung-galaxy-tab

Except that other carriers are doing the same thing. This sounds like groups of companies screwing their customers.

How do you Samsung / Android apologists argue with this, this and this?

If that's not blatant copying*, I don't know what is.

*disclaimer, I work for a large industrial manufacturing company that has had our products copied and ripped off by Samsung.

Apple has the highest market cap of any company right now. In order for them to be worth that, they can't just make more profit than each of their competitors. They have to make substantially more.

Umm... don't they? 7% of sales but 35% of profits in desktop OS. Also see 2/3rds of phone profits in 2Q 2011 for another example.

What's next, you're going to explain to me that Apple is poised to lose it's lead in tablets? If they do, which perhaps they will, I think you'll find they still have a healthy market for them, huge sales, and amazing gross margins. Even if Ice Cream Sandwich, or whatever cute name the next big Android OS opens up things to Android selling more tablets overall.

Not so much.

http://9to5mac.com/2011/09/06/seagate-announces-industrys-first-4tb-hard-drive/

Actually no they didn't. They present pictures of both (yes those picture aspects were changed to make them look more familiar) but they also had physical representations of the models in court. The decision wasn't made off the photo's alone.

Do you have a citation for that?

Apple themselves stated in the evidence that the Galaxy S was larger in dimensions and the photo in question was just one (I believe it one of the photos on page 28 of the evidence presented). It was the only photo with the 'bad' dimensions. It is believed by legal experts that the photo is actually a prototype photo similar to the mock ups released by Samsung prior to the actual product release showing it was 'thinner' than the iPad.

http://gadgetsheaven.n-ame.com/?p=2309

Galaxy S does include “some non-identical elements, such as the slightly larger dimensions.” This supports the idea that Apple isn’t trying to secretly submit this evidence to the courts. Many have noted a German court’s decision to grant Apple with the original preliminary injunction on the Galaxy tab didn’t take the doctored images into account. In fact, patent expert Florian Mueller noted ”the court’s decision was based on both Apple’s motion and Samsung’s pre-emptive opposition pleading” and also stated “Samsung is in a legally weak position against Apple. If Samsung wants to inspire confidence, it has to understand that half the truth is sometimes tantamount to a whole lie.”

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/08/is-apple-faking-evidence-to-crush-the-competition-not-likely.ars

Müller doubts that the images are outcome-determinative for the case in The Netherlands. "Apple has asserted in its Dutch complaint several technical patents, unrelated to the size of the device, and a Community design that's also about a shape rather than a particular size," he said. Furthermore, Apple clearly noted that there is a size difference between the two devices in its legal filing.

http://9to5mac.com/2011/08/19/samsung-claims-apple-doctored-galaxy-phone-images-in-netherlands-court/ http://gadgetsheaven.n-ame.com/?p=2309

The decision to ban was not made of off a single photo out of a series of photos. Would you, if you were a judge, base your decision off of an image when the relevant piece of hardware can simply be handed to you for inspection?

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/apple-accused-of-doctoring-image-to-sink-galaxy-tab-101-in-europe-update/14246

[UPDATE: The judge at the middle of this case claims that he actually handled the tablets to back up the images supplied by Apple.]

So you don't have any citation that they had physical representations in court then.

Apple themselves stated in the evidence that the Galaxy S was larger in dimensions and the photo in question was just one (I believe it one of the photos on page 28 of the evidence presented). It was the only photo with the 'bad' dimensions. It is believed by legal experts that the photo is actually a prototype photo similar to the mock ups released by Samsung prior to the actual product release showing it was 'thinner' than the iPad.

http://gadgetsheaven.n-ame.com/?p=2309

Galaxy S does include “some non-identical elements, such as the slightly larger dimensions.” This supports the idea that Apple isn’t trying to secretly submit this evidence to the courts. Many have noted a German court’s decision to grant Apple with the original preliminary injunction on the Galaxy tab didn’t take the doctored images into account. In fact, patent expert Florian Mueller noted ”the court’s decision was based on both Apple’s motion and Samsung’s pre-emptive opposition pleading” and also stated “Samsung is in a legally weak position against Apple. If Samsung wants to inspire confidence, it has to understand that half the truth is sometimes tantamount to a whole lie.”

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/08/is-apple-faking-evidence-to-crush-the-competition-not-likely.ars

Müller doubts that the images are outcome-determinative for the case in The Netherlands. "Apple has asserted in its Dutch complaint several technical patents, unrelated to the size of the device, and a Community design that's also about a shape rather than a particular size," he said. Furthermore, Apple clearly noted that there is a size difference between the two devices in its legal filing.

http://9to5mac.com/2011/08/19/samsung-claims-apple-doctored-galaxy-phone-images-in-netherlands-court/
http://gadgetsheaven.n-ame.com/?p=2309

The decision to ban was not made of off a single photo out of a series of photos. Would you, if you were a judge, base your decision off of an image when the relevant piece of hardware can simply be handed to you for inspection?

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/apple-accused-of-doctoring-image-to-sink-galaxy-tab-101-in-europe-update/14246

[UPDATE: The judge at the middle of this case claims that he actually handled the tablets to back up the images supplied by Apple.]

Yep. A much better version of the story is available on the Register, based on 9to5mac.com's story, which seems to be identical to TekGoblin's, but was maybe published earlier according to time stamps in an unspecified time zone.

Basically, iOS 5 will support a feature that Japanese phones have universally supported for the past several years. And that third-party apps have added to the iPhone itself since iOS 4 (when Apple finally realized UNIX is multitasking).

I don't think Apple is just a hardware company anymore.

They make 30% of sales on the apps. They say they aren't making money off of it, but then, with their automization, they aren't making money off of 30%, I can guarantee that the developers who make 70% aren't either. And that's just not the case.

It's not an either/or here. Apple does both hardware/software. What throws people off is that they sell enough of their own hardware, that they don't need to license out their software for use with other hardware, ala Microsoft, but it doesn't make them exclusively a hardware comany.

In fact, considering music/movies/app sales, I'd say they're in the the media business too. Especially considering Steve Job's stake in Disney and Pixar, which he uses to be an ambassador between the computer and media worlds and cut deals.

So, you're saying that this chart is a lie?

Remember, that 30% of not much money is still not much money. And you have to sell a BUNCH of 99 cent apps to make the same revenue as one iPhone, iPad or Mac.

But you just keep on worrying about that horrific 30%, even though it isn't there to do anything but defray the costs of maintaining the "store", and, oh yeah, drive hardware sales.

You are likely in a very small minority. Most people use a PC for itunes and buy almost nothing but digital stuff from apple. They can afford to lose you as gains are significantly larger.

However, that "small minority" (hardware purchasers) happens to be their greatest revenue stream BY FAR. Note that even their Mac sales handily eclipse both the iTunes Store sales and the "Other" category (which is probably Apple TV, accessory and software sales combined).

You might check your facts before you post, or risk looking like an idiot.

While HP, Dell etc. have everything build by Foxconn - big difference.

Don't be an idiot.

HP & Dell have their own design people just like Apple do, else Foxconn would just be churning out identical black boxes that would just be re-badged by Dell and HP.

Foxconn CEO: Apple products “very difficult” to make - you can spare us the "that's because Apple engineers are idiots and make them overly complicated to build when they could just make the not-quite-the-same PCs everyone else does".

What are the odds that this iCloud service isn't run OSX server at it's core?

Well, some is OS X. But certainly not all.

Hint: It ain't HP or Dell, neither. Nor is it running a "free" (as in beer) Linux distro; so no snarky comments about OS X Server. Those to Linuces are know for their superior load-balancing software, and I would imagine that's what they are being used for.

That'll be $46,000, Mr. Jobs. Now Apple knows how iPhone owners feel. :-)

Its only/main real use will be DisplayPort.

Wow, for a "geek" site, Slashdot seems inordinately populated with techno-IDIOTS, who don't bother to KEEP UP on IN THE PIPELINE THUNDERBOLT PRODUCTS. And there is beginning to be interest shown by other companies, like Canon, AJA, Apogee, Sonnet, and others.

I doubt very much that Sony is going to be involved in the naming conventions of future iPhones.

The Sony guy saying "iPhone 5" is just him trying to describe the next generation in absence of an official name.

Actually, he neither said anything about "iPhone 5" nor about 8 megapixels. http://www.9to5mac.com/59019/howard-stringer-says-sony-image-sensors-delayed-for-apples-ipad/:

Paraphrased: “Our best sensor technology is built in one of the (tsunami) affected factories. Those go to Apple for their iPhonesor iPads. Isn’t that something? They buy our best sensors from us?”

Lion Server will be a part of regular Mac OS X Lion and not a separate product. So it'll still exist, but not like before. http://www.9to5mac.com/53759/apple-announced-lion-server-comes-integrated-into-mac-os-x-lion/

I don't know if there's anything left to defend. Talk about much ado about nothing. I'm just glad to know that Apple hardware performs so well that when one of them has problems it's so bizarre it makes the front page of slashdot.

According to this article, their authentication servers got overloaded, and they cut down the number of channels to reduce the authentication load while they bought more.

While I normally rally against evil corporations hiding the truth, somehow "we couldn't convince the higher-ups to buy enough servers until everything went to pot" seems like normal operating launch-day problems.

According to 9to5Mac, it's a server issue not pissed-off providers (although there may be some of those too)

http://www.9to5mac.com/56532/time-warner-ipad-app-crashed-servers-halve-offering/

‘It’s not a good party unless you run out of beer,’ says TWC in regards to the loss of channels in the iPad app today. They deny outages are being caused by programmers who could have pulled their content even though some are reportedly upset.

It appears that it actually isn’t the streaming load that is buckling the servers, but the authentication servers according to ablog post by Time Warner Cable’s Jeff Simmermon:

Our engineering team is working as hard as they can to put a fix in place and get everything up and running as soon as they can. For the time being, the app is running with only 15 channels. We have found that by temporarily reducing the number of available channels, we can ease strain on the authentication process. This will enable us to offer at least some sort of an experience to our customers while we get a fix in place. We’ll add the other 17 channels back in as soon as we can fix the underlying issue, and we’ll be adding more channels in future iterations of the app as well.

Light Peak is designed to be what the minimal Intel marketing on Light Peak calls "multi-protocol" capable, which most observers have taken to mean "it can serve as the transport layer for other protocols" in the same way that FireWire can serve as a TCP/IP connection on the Mac, today. The exact capabilities do not seem to be public information, just yet. The public demonstrations of Light Peak which Intel has performed clearly indicate that one intended use case is a remote "hub" which can have Light Peak as well as other connection types on it, such as the USB and Light Peak hub demonstrated in this Intel demonstration of Light Peak.

if you ignore the computers that generate the most revenue for Apple, then Apple looks like it did five years ago, and that's the opposite of Dell buying AMD?

Only if you ignore iOS devices generate 65% of Apple's earnings.

Falcon

I'm trying to replace my 1st gen iPhone with a Go phone, and the cheapest one is $79. I might as well just spring $30 less for an iPhone 3Gs.

FTFY.

I don't usually respond to AC's... but Mac market share is not increasing.

Ironic that your post has the factual correctness of an AC. Try to find a quarter when the Mac market share was NOT increasing greater than the overall computer market (ie increasing relative to the market)

http://www.9to5mac.com/30393/apple-breaks-through-10-us-marketshare-for-the-first-time-since-the-early-90s

Yes, fanboys would make the iPad *alone* in the top third of the Fortune 500 based on revenues.

http://www.9to5mac.com/49782/if-the-ipad-were-a-stand-alone-company-it-would-rank-within-the-top-third-of-the-fortune-500

I'd say 95% of the market is definitely stealing the market. They're even hurting netbook sales according to Microsoft.

Actually, sighted, blind and deaf people can connect bluetooth keyboards to their iPhones now. Only dumb ones can't.

Maybe this will help "create things"

http://9to5mac.com/adobe-photoshop-express-ipad-support

how the loyalists try to spin this one as a good thing.

Thanks! I'll give it a shot. Apple has been applying for software (and hardware) patents for the last 8-10 years or so that they have no intention of actually creating and bringing to market. All one needs to do to verify this is to take a look at some of their patent submissions, then be honest with yourself about what Apple sells, and the quality of product Apple sells. Getting it? Apple is seeking patents on things that they DON'T want brought to market. Once they have the patent, they are assured that it will never get anywhere. Why would they do this? Look to their explanations about Flash on iOS and Adobe's third party dev tools. Same thing. That's why.

I absolutely thought the exact same thing when I saw this story awhile ago... no way Apple would make this, but they must have seen someone else might, so obviously they applied for it just to squat on it.

slide-in iPhone spectacles

Market caps are almost the same.

They're both around 200 B and change.

http://www.everythingicafe.com/aapl-passes-msft-in-market-cap/2010/05/26/

http://247wallst.com/2010/05/27/apple-beats-microsoft-in-market-value-msft-aapl/

http://www.9to5mac.com/AAPL-MSFT-345345332

why assume that apple would send the ads over the one pipeline that costs, instead of the plurality of pipelines that don't cost?

All end up costing.

If they cache them on the device, they cost the user storage space - and these are devices that, by todays standards, are woefully under spec for storage (16 to 64 gig, no ability to expand it or add additional storage media).

a few advertisers looking for a higher-end market.

Apple is no longer "the high-end market". Computers are commodity devices. Apple's most pimped-out iPad costs less than an entry level computer a decade ago.

Apple's biggest customers are cheap thieves. They'll buy an iPod, but they sure as hell didn't pay for the billions of bits of mp3s on them. Apple made its nut by aiding large-scale copyright violations.

Apple customers are sheep. "I bought an iPad!" That'sa nice. Too bad that everything you can do with it, I can do much better with a 4-year-old laptop.

Watch hi-def movies? You can't do that - downscaled to 1028x576 is not high def. Apple lied to you, sucker. But I can watch hi-def on my laptop, and with a 17" screen, others can watch them easier too. And I can pop in a dvd. Can you? Aw, so your dvd collection is inaccessible now. So much for being a "media tablet." Speaking of which, how's your webcam? Oops, you don't have one.

You bought the iPad with 64 gigs of storage? Big deal, my laptop has 640 gigs (twin 320 gig), plus if I need more, I can plug in all sorts of external storage.

System memory? 256 meg - that's it?. 4 gigs on that 4-year old laptop.

Multi-tasking? You'll get "some" of that in your next update, I've got linux.

Software? You're locked into the App Store. The worst part - you paid to be locked in.

Funny how that 4-year-old laptop, at the same price even with the extra ram and hard disk, beats the pants off Apple's shiny new toy. Because the iPad is a toy.

The iPad is not for the "high-end" market - Apple stopped targeting them (people who would spend 10k on a pimped out mac for graphics work) a long time ago, Apple is just a consumer products company now.

They've already started doing it: http://www.9to5mac.com/Flash-html5-canvas-35409730

" Please read it if you don't believe me: the browser vulnerability counts are on page 36, the browser bug fix lead times are on page 38, and the plugin vulnerability counts are on page 41.
"
- Okay, i used your link and pulled up a 12 page document. I can't get to the mythical page 36 in a 12 page document. As for browser vulnerability counts, that's a red herring. We're talking about Flash. Why are you attempting to misdirect me to a discussion about browsers.

"The study shows that Flash is actually less buggy than any browser security-hole-wise,"
- I don't see that in the report because the pages you reference aren't there when I pull it up. And again, browser statistics when we're talking about Flash is red herring.

"So, bloated in comparison to what exactly?"
- Bloated in comparison to properly written code rather than using a lowest common denominator like Flash to create apps. Reference http://www.9to5mac.com/adobe_v_apple_big_stakes for the quote, "For example, a 'hello world' Flash app designed for the iPhone will consume 8MB of memory, rather than the few KB it should, one engineer told Wired." Unnecessarily bloated software which requires much more processor and battery to run, which to the end user's perception will look like the iPhone/iPad platform is to blame when actually it's a lazy developer and a bloated Flash app that is causing the issue.

"you're using it to argue that HTML+JS is better than Flash"
- No, that is certainly NOT what I said. It may be what you think I said, but I simply said that Apple made the right choice not to include Flash and the reasons Jobs cited were all legitimate.

"he lectures Adobe about openness while pushing an unprecedentedly closed platform."
-He correctly refutes Adobe's PR campaign that they are open. His exact quote is "Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript - all open standards. " 100% accurate.

" He talks about openness but pushes H.264."
- Again, his exact statement is "decoder called H.264 - an industry standard" He does NOT say H264 is open as you're implying.

" He lectures Adobe about Cocoa support when major Apple software like Final Cut Pro and iTunes are still Carbon."
- Most if not all of the added features in the last several version are in Cocoa. His real beef is "This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features." So his complaint is that advantages of improvements in the Apple platform are essentially held hostage by third party development platforms is true.

"He claims rollovers only exist in Flash and not in HTML+JS sites."
-He most definitely does NOT say rollovers do not exist in HTML+JS sites. Please show me where he says that in Thoughts on Flash?

" He claims Flash doesn't support touch when in fact 10.1 supports it better than the HTML 5 draft. He implies anything conceived originally for desktops is hopeless on mobile (which is preposterous... "
- He says "But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards - all areas where Flash falls short." Flash falls short in those areas. 10.1 supports it? Really, just released 10.1? Where the hell has Adobe been for the last 3 years the iPhone has been out, they only just released this?

"He claims iPhone ships with a fast HTML 5 implementation, when it's actually slower than other smartphones and much slower than Flash."
- Again, you make a grand statement and couple it with a misdirection. I don't see where in Thoughts on Flash he says it ship

iPad printing solved! http://www.9to5mac.com/node/15949?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+9To5Mac-MacAllDay+(9+to+5+Mac+-+Apple+Intelligence)

Done.

Especially when the chief censor is this guy:

http://www.9to5mac.com/steve-jobs-hacks-phones-234556455

But really, this isn't about censorship. This is about branding. Because Apple doesn't sell technology any more, they sell an image. And that image doesn't have room for stroke facilitation software.

$2400 will get you the top of the line 15" MacBook Pro. A similarly specced Dell Precision Mobile Workstation will only have a superior video card (Quadro FX 1800M), and maybe a higher def screen, and certainly vastly superior docking options and ports. Battery life and portability are the big drawbacks to the PC side of the aisle.

At the high end of things, the computer you buy depends entirely on your main application. For anyone in digital content creation, you have to have OS X in order to have Logic and Final Cut. If you're making movies, music, or web pages, you're probably going to get a Mac. If you're mainly an engineer or business applications user or developer, you're going to get a PC. If all you do is check Facebook or troll slashdot, the Apple logo is a very expensive brand name, but the MacBook or a used MacBook Pro with the extended warranty is probably worth the money compared to trying to maintain a virus-free windows installation. If you don't need any commercial application support, dual monitor support, etc., a netbook or notebook preinstalled with Linux is a great option.

Personally, I usually have the latest gen MacBook Pro* triple booted with Windows 7 and Ubuntu, since I have clients all over the board. The new terabyte 2.5" 12mm drive from Western Digital fits in the unibody models, so I have a 500G data partition, 250 for OS X (Logic/Final Cut are huge), 150 for 7, and 100 for Ubuntu.

OS X is a great operating system, it's just unfortunately in the hands of perhaps the biggest douchebag in the world. I hope after his reign has passed, the company falls apart and OS X is unshackled from Mac hardware and the black hole that is his ego.

*yes, I get it. It's supposed to be funny.

AT&T Wireless seems to be a company intent on hari-kari. It has sold its customers the wildly popular iPhone, and now blames its customer base for using the device:

AT&T made more threatening remarks aimed at iPhone users ("Wireless data hogs") who use too much "audio and video streaming" today. AT&T Wireless CEO Ralph de la Vega told attendees at a UBS conference in New York...

Wireless data hogs who jam the airwaves by watching video on their iPhones will be put on tighter leashes, ...[AT&T] will also give high-bandwidth users incentives to "reduce or modify their usage."

Just 3 percent of "smart" phone users are consuming 40 percent of the network capacity, de la Vega said, adding that the most high-bandwidth activity is video and audio streaming. Several applications on the iPhone provide nonstop Internet radio.

De la Vega also defended the network's performance, saying testing showed that AT&T's third-generation, or 3G, network was faster than that of competitors, and that major problems are concentrated in New York and San Francisco, which are packed with smart phone users.

AT&T has already pushed iPhone Tethering back into 2010 with no hard date in sight.

Obviously, these threats by De la Vega are not going well with its customer base, one who has grown increasingly surly. While the first of Dan Lyons' "Operation Chokehold" customer protests may have been unsuccessful, it would be easy to see how iPhone/AT&T customers could find other ways to show their dissatisfaction. And surely, all of this has been noted and noted well in Cupertino at Apple HQ. The last thing it wants in the face of increased competition for smartphone sales is a customer revolt towards an antagonistic company. That in and of itself would suggest that Apple must surely be planning to not renew its exclusivity contract with AT&T, not without some contractually specified infrastructure improvements at the very least.

While other smartphone brand owners and carriers may smugly note that they do not have these problems, they would be wise to note this emerging issue. As Droid and other smartphones become more widely accepted and used on other carrier networks, it is seemingly inevitable that they too will join the ranks of the disconnected unless they happen to be nearby a traditional wireless router that they can connect their pocket device to.

The bottom line is that adoption may well bring about data caps with high charges for heavy users, simply because there are not that many providers and should they note that one sees a revenue increase by raising its rates, they can easily follow suit. This in turn will slow the adoption of broadband migration to smartphone devices at least until compression and connection technologies catch up and surpass this problem.

>>That's global smartphone market share. Show a graph with global market share of ALL wireless handsets, not just smartphones.

>Okay, from TFA, here's a graph entitled Top 10 Mobile Phones in Use.

Actually, it's entitled "Top 10 Mobile Phones in Use (U.S.)". Now reread what the parent asked for, particularly where it says "global market share". Since when is US global?

I haven't found full figures for global share (except a suggestion they're contained in a market research report with a price tag of $2000 US). However, I do see a suggestion that they have a 2.5% global share, compared to the 4% US share that you quote. I also understand that Nokia phones have a 38% global share, although I'm uncertain how this divides between their different ranges, but this seems very suggestive that they have a single platform that is a lot more popular than the iPhone, as I believe they only produce phones with either 3 or 4 different OS variants.

According to the latest reliability charts, Apple hardware is the expensive and unreliable choice.

Citation needed!

Let's see what Google returns. Apple's laptops rate 'Better than Average' in reliability study. Macs not all that for reliability. That article puts Dells in the middle with laptop reliability with Macs above them. "For the first time, Apple Inc. dropped out of the top spot in the computer-reliability ranking of Rescuecom Corp., a Syracuse, N.Y.-based chain of service shops, and ended in third place behind a pair of Asian computer makers that specialize in laptops."

Falcon

I guess that must be the 99% who don't use an Iphone anyway. Oh wait, to be fair, it's now as low as 97.5%.

That's 97.5% including dumbphones.

I guess that must be the 99% who don't use an Iphone anyway. Oh wait, to be fair, it's now as low as 97.5%.

You mean like this?

http://www.9to5mac.com/oleophobic-screen-iphone-3gs

You're right, but sadly (as with today's Android/Blackberry Google Voice announcement), almost all of those apps with deeper functionality will come out last for the iPhone

Since there's already an iPhone Google Voice App too I predict it will have exactly zero effect on phone and/or app sales - and that we'll see ten more Google Voice apps on the iPhone before the year is out.

The iPhone market is simply too large and lucrative at this point to be anything but the primary development target, and that will only be truer in the next few years.

Might make sense in light of the rumours that iWork is going to turn into a web app:
http://9to5mac.com/iwork-going-cloud
"We just got a truckload of Macworld information dumped on us from our best source. As we piece it together we'll trickle it out. The first big piece of information is that iWork is going into the Cloud. Not just storage, either. We are talking interface for Numbers, Pages and Keynote (which is going to see some interesting new templates and transition additions). Yes, the iWork applications are now going to be Web Applications."