Slashdot Mirror

at least in the US your numbers are trash:

http://gigaom.com/2010/08/02/android-sales-overtake-iphone-in-the-u-s/

notice the date.

Um, yes, my worldwide sales numbers are for the world, not the US. I'm not sure exactly what you think that means. Care to elaborate?

at least in the US your numbers are trash:

http://gigaom.com/2010/08/02/android-sales-overtake-iphone-in-the-u-s/

notice the date.

Never mind crap like "Sorry, Netflix is not available in your country... yet"

That's exactly my problem. I would like paying for these things. But nothing is willing to sell it in my country. No iTunes Moves/Series, no Netflix, no Hulu, no Amazon.com movies, Google TV or anything. And I'm not living in some backwater. My country (The Netherlands) has the highest average broadband speed in Europe and 4th highest worldwide.*

I think the Dutch equivalent of the MAFIAA has something to do with it (BREIN and BUMA/STEMRA). I hope the European Commisioner or Digital Agenda Nelie Kroes will enforce that media needs to be available to all the countries in the common market under the same conditions.

*) http://gigaom.com/broadband/state-of-the-internet-what-are-the-fastest-cities-in-the-world/

your statement about setup is plain bullshit. You might have trouble finding your desired programs if you are new to windows vs. experienced Linux user, but once the machine is set up, it's done, it's there

Maybe in a perfect world that is true but in my day to day work, I am always faced with new challenges that I need a new tool for. Just recently, I had to write a python script to automate logging in and downloading a product spreadsheet for an ecommerce site one of my customers runs. Open up Synaptic and search for python and html, python-mechanize showed up, I clicked install and was off and running. Took about 1 minute. If you are claiming that it is just as easy to meet changing requirements on a windows system than Linux then you are just kidding yourself.

Regarding your point about the scroll: http://gigaom.com/mobile/scroll-in-windows-without-the-cursor-focus/ - very first hit on google...

Good find. I know there's a dirty hack to support alt-click windows moving and resizing on Windows but I'd rather just use the system that supports it natively.

While I do get your points about the desktop, your statement about setup is plain bullshit. You might have trouble finding your desired programs if you are new to windows vs. experienced Linux user, but once the machine is set up, it's done, it's there - there is no more time sink there - claiming that to be a big issue is just wrong.

Regarding your point about the scroll: http://gigaom.com/mobile/scroll-in-windows-without-the-cursor-focus/ - very first hit on google...

Coiffin, meet nail. He just blew the m$ mobile plan B: extortion through litigation, since plan A - a quality mobile OS - is clearly dead in the water.

I've always seen Chrome as a way for Google to stimulate other browsers to be better and drive innovation. Every since Chrome came onto the scene, showing off its fast rendering and javascript engine, other browser companies have had to step up their game

That's true, and that may have been the initial intent, but they've been pushing the Chrome browser like practically no other product of theirs. A Chrome ad appears on Youtube pages very frequently, in several formats, and "types" of ads (some are animated, some are still images saying something like "browser faster"), and they keep making oddball viral-ish Chrome campaigns. I can't think of any product they push this hard (although Google+ may change that).

Chrome market share has been rising inexorably since its release.

It's not just a tech demo anymore. They want the browser market.

They may instead. Yes, I post as "anonymous coward" here (but, I sign off on my posts, as "APK", with good reasons illustrated with proofs, below (because I am not going to make it easy on the "true trolls" around here to try to "bug me" as they have & do)):

"One simple antidote to this seems to rest in the very old-fashioned idea of standing by your good name. Adopt a pseudonym and you are not putting much of yourself on the line. Put your name to something and your words are freighted with responsibility." - Tim Adams The Observer, Sunday 24 July 2011

Instead, How about just being yourself? As long as you're not breaking the law, I don't see what the big deal is (unless you're afraid of retaliation from "the powers that be" that is, & that I can FULLY understand also - still, you're really better off NOT saying anything in that case, because others are aware of it also anyhow (though you may think they are not)).

A simpler idea IS JUST BE WHO YOU ARE AND DON'T BE AFRAID OF WHAT YOU SAY... if you are? Then, don't say it @ ALL, period... it's THAT simple really.

* I mean, who does this guy *THINK* he is fooling, telegraphing what he himself does?

(He's not only HIDING, albeit, he's hiding in PLAIN SIGHT, & apparently not very confident in what he's saying, or he's post as himself everywhere he goes, rather than using handles/nicks!)

Others, even serious "notables", think as I do on this subject (Zuckerberg being one):

---

http://gigaom.com/2011/04/11/online-identity-isnt-a-transaction-its-a-feeling/

PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT:

"having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity"

---

Others, including the "registered LUSER" crowd around here that toss that around like it makes them "better" than us AC's? Are of that "ilk", imo @ least!

Fact is, I have YET to have one of them "get the best of me" in technical debate here since 2003 to present day (as well as other spots online, & I don't "start it", but I do and WILL, finish it).

Do I sound "self-righteous" here? Sure, & admittedly... but nobody can tell me that defending yourself, especially in righteous anger, is "wrong"... especially when notables online even agree with me, such as Mr. Bruce Perens:

---

PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT:

"Actually, there is a time and place for flame wars. Justified anger is better than sitting aside while bad stuff happens." - by Bruce Perens (3872) * on Saturday April 07 2007, @01:59PM (#18647947) Homepage Journal

---

Yes, others see things as I do... I am sure MOST of you do as well, as it's really just common-sense & decency - PLUS, nobody can tell anyone they are "wrong" for defending themselves, vs. trolls (online bullying cowardly scum), especially ac ones, or real bullies. I think & KNOW from experience, it IS the BEST THING YOU CAN DO! Most of them won't try it again, unless they do it as ac (so much for "registered LUSER" accounts then, eh?).

No, "vietnam tactics"? They didn't work in vietnam or afghanistan either (despite those who say the USSR &/or USA lost those, because I surely don't see USSR or USA infrastructure or cites bombed into the dust, or occupied either... if that's "losing"? Then, who wants to win I say!).

Still - Doesn't change the fact that online weasels are scum, plain & simple.

(The world today's FULL of them in fact. Am I telling anyone something they don't know already? No, I doubt it.)

No, instead, once I "smoke them" for their trolling shenanigans, usually with their own technical blunders?

Well, in "effete retaliation", I get adhominem attacks, threats they will mod down all of my posts... weak, & worse than women do!

(Big deal on the effete mod downs though & this is where they "go wrong": I have hundreds of u

This link was posted earlier by choko, but it bears repeating since I see this or similar statements all through this article's comments. It's about a report from the Wall Street Journal that showed over half of the popular iPhone apps they tested sent personal information without asking permission.

Here is a link. The issue isn't android specific. I could provide a few more, but I'm sure everyone knows how to use google.

http://gigaom.com/apple/many-iphone-apps-share-your-private-data/

Ironically, the net effect of all of this from Netflix's side is that that they're going to lose $2/mo from me which somebody else will probably get (Amazon VOD perhaps -- all depends on who has what I want available).

Ironically, you're doing exactly what they want you to do.
Cancel the lesser profitable DVD delivery for the "next to nothing" streaming.

Good job I say... carry on!

The writing has been on the wall for a LONG time.
http://gigaom.com/video/netflix-the-future-is-streaming/

That's why I cancelled my Netflix account... without rage, the LAST time
they increased their prices.

-AI

First line of TFA:

200 million iOS users have downloaded over 15 billion apps from its App Store

That equates to an average of 75 downloads per iOS user. That's a lot.

Now I have no idea how many apps a typical iOS user has installed on their phone, but if it's half that I'd be surprised. So sure there are many updates included in this number.

This site has some more statistics on the app's value and prices paid (no idea on the reliability of these numbers, other than that they sound altogether plausible to me). They claim that the average payment amount per app (averaging in the free apps!) is $0.91. TFA mentions a total of $2.5b paid out to developers, which is 70% of the price a user pays, so $3.6b total revenue. This results in about 4 billion total app downloads, or more like 20 per iOS user. An already much more reasonable sounding number. And that also means 11 billion (an average of almost three per installed app) are updates.

I found it on teh Google!

(Oh, and here's what Tesla does). FYI: conventional li-ion cells (the type Tesla uses) are only mildly toxic, and the stable chemistries (like the type GM and pretty much everyone unconnected to Tesla uses) are nontoxic.

And Steve Jobs has said publicly that is where the majority of their revenue comes from.

Citation most definitely needed for this. The majority of their revenue may be coming from iOS devices, but it is the *device sales,* not the *app store,* that is accounting for the vast majority of their revenue.

10 billion plus apps downloaded. 200 million iOS devices sold to date. That's roughly 50 apps per device. Some year-old numbers suggest that 75% of the apps in the app store are paid apps - so let's assume that 38 of the 50 apps per device are also paid apps. Again from last year, average price of a paid app was $3.63.

So the "average" iOS device, with 38 paid apps, has generated 137.94 in app store revenue. Apple keeps 30% of that, for a cool $41.40 per iOS device, or 8.3 billion in revenues from every app sold since the app store was opened.

Last year, Apple had 65.2 billion in revenue.

Please show your math that leads you to conclude that the app store is the "major source" of Apple's revenues?

Manufacturers of Android phones are single-sourcing their OS, all of the Google mobile apps and services (which aren't OSS and must be licensed btw), the phone's location service, the phone's internet search -- Google forbids hardware vendors from using non-Google internet and location services. Why do you think Motorola has begun developing their own mobile OS as a backup?

My approach is cheaper: lock down the system. Install Fedora, give my mother a user that has type user_u in SELinux, and breath a little easier now that I know she cannot accidentally run some random program she downloaded. There are still vulnerabilities, but it would take a far more sophisticated attack than what one normally sees.

Kid Proofing a Mac With Parental Controls
s/Kid/Parent/

Allows you to limit the applications a user can execute.

In case anyone was wondering, Facebook's 'negligible revenue' is approximately $1billion, with profits of around $300million. Sources at this point seem to be mainly rumor, and vary, but are in the same range.

28% of all US music sales and growing. http://gigaom.com/apple/itunes-accounts-for-28-of-u-s-music-sales/

Microsoft is aggressively marketing Windows on the mobile ARM architecture after sitting it out on the sidelines for years (Windows CE was available but a weak option for most purposes). It was not until recently that Microsoft agreed to even compile a version of Windows other than CE to the ARM RISC chip set. They see that they cannot simply hide behind their Intel partnership if they want to be relevant in the future. The future is looking more like ARM will be dominate in the personal space and Microsoft wants to be a player. To do so they are going to make offer some very sweet deals for certain manufactures such as Nokia.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2011/jan11/01-05socsupport.mspx
http://gigaom.com/mobile/with-nokia-dating-microsoft-intel-was-just-stood-up/

How non-technical, and after how thorough of a look?

I'll just leave these here...

http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-297432.html
http://gigaom.com/2008/08/31/dont-like-the-iphone-check-out-these-touchscreen-phones/
http://www.gsmarena.com/newscomm-769.php
http://www.telecomasia.net/node/5199
http://www.google.com/search?q=SPH-1300&hl=en&prmd=ivns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=jjfATeTDOIL30gHT_tXuBA&ved=0CC4QsAQ&biw=1680&bih=947
http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=ET&p_theme=et&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EEF6B3EB0A8C768&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM
http://cgi.ebay.com/SPRINT-PCS-PALM-OS-WIRELESS-PHONE-SPH-1300-DUAL-BAND-/180613037497
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2000-09-25/news/18143226_1_cell-phone-palm-os
http://www.geardiary.com/2006/11/30/the-palm-treo-700p-palm-os-smartphone-review/
http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=1690
http://www.gizmag.com/go/2306/
http://www.google.com/search?q=sony+p900
http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/10/13/lg.debuts.new.prada.phone/
http://www.esato.com/phones/compare.php?phone=433&cp=439
http://gizmodo.com/#!190670/cect-a1000-touchscreen-phone-with-1000-hours-standby
http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/at-t-8525/4505-6452_7-32133413.html?tag=lia;rcol

these aren't phones, but what the hell... they could still be mistaken for an iPhone at a glance...

http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/prodserv/handheld.html
http://www.suddenlink.net/pages/curtismc/palms.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_III

Yes, but just like Windows: the iPad is closed source. Android is not. And Android has already surpassed the iPhone in sales. http://gigaom.com/apple/iphone-flat-in-u-s-as-android-takes-market-share-lead/

Yes, both Apple and Microsoft are anti-choice and act in anti-competitive manners. This is nothing new, nor will anyone step in to stop it.

http://gigaom.com/video/google-forces-roku-to-take-down-its-youtube-channel/

http://www.webpronews.com/skyhook-wireless-sues-google-2010-09

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/31/google_clamps_down_on_android_partners/

http://www.businessinsider.com/eric-schmidt-tried-to-get-google-to-hide-his-political-donation-in-search-results-2011-4?op=1

I'd love to. I really would. However, there's no way of telling an idle post from a worthwhile story in the RSS feed. That's a problem. And it's an unfair one too.

The fairest thing to do would be to have idle as a separate site. That way those who want to read this juvenile, low-brow, digg-style garbage can do so, without it encroaching on those of us who really, really don't.

Unfortunately, the problem is compounded by samzenpus, who only ever posts idle crap -- but does not always post it in "idle". He cross-posts his garbage in all sections of the site, although it is always idle in content. Blocking samzenpus does not solve the problem, again because of the RSS feed.

Please give samzenpus his own site. And keep him off this one.

There is a great article on GigaOM on how to use yahoo pipes to filter your rss feeds. It works very well and you should be able to do what you listed above.
Enjoy!

I just came in after reading all of this and I would like to make a statement. It's people like you that have no integrity and are ruining forums.

Even Mark Zuckerberg feels that way about you multiple account using trolls that keep many accounts as you yourself admit doing online to troll others with. See this quote from him âoehaving two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.â that was from http://gigaom.com/2011/04/11/online-identity-isnt-a-transaction-its-a-feeling/ .

You exemplify just the kind of trash he's speaking of there TheEndOfDays, since you literally admitted to having multiple registered account sock puppets here on slashdot.

No matter what you say at this point, TheEndOfDays, I'd say either way it makes you a troll or a liar (or both actually).

Earlier, I posted in this article on slashdot today using my normal registered account but I am afraid to keep using it seeing how you 2 nutjobs operate in tomhudson and yourself. I don't dare put either of you in your place here or you may start stalking me and trolling me with your either your alternate sock puppet accounts here or by anonymous cowards trolling posts as tomhudson admits doing.

This place is being over run by trash like yourselves I am sad to say.

But under the current law Sony has a legal expectation that users not modify their software. If we don't like that we should work on modifying IP law.

That's just authoritarian bullshit. As long as you don't redistribute your changes, you should be able to do whatever the hell you want with your copy, especially when the software is limiting your use of the hardware.

"Merely bypassing a technological protection that restricts a user from viewing or using a work is insufficient to trigger the DMCA's anti-circumvention provision. The DMCA prohibits only forms of access that would violate or impinge on the protections that the Copyright Act otherwise affords copyright owners."

http://gigaom.com/video/new-dmca-exemptions-ripping-dvds-for-online-video-now-legal/

In our conversation, Ray noted there is a very good chance that U.S. consumers will be disappointed by the LTE roll out, mostly because Verizon and AT&T don’t have enough spectrum.

“Our competitors are launching LTE in fairly limited bandwidths of spectrum,” he pointed out. “So, 10 to 20 megahertz of LTE spectrum doesn’t give you a significant benefit in any manner, or form, from a performance perspective over and above HSPA+.”
...
“We have clean, uncluttered, untouched spectrum that we can leverage to support growth in smartphones and other devices into over the coming months and years,” Ray said. T-Mobile USA, he continued, has used only about a third of about 6030 MHz of spectrum it acquired for roughly $2.64 billion in the 2006 AWS auction. This gives them ample room to upgrade to 42 megabit per second capability next year, Ray pointed out.

From: T-Mobile USA CTO Disses AT&T, LTE and WiMAX

The video in the linked site, which has been around since at least 2009, is entirely animated. It's a neat idea, but show me a physical device.

The ATT 3G service listens in at 850Mhz and 1900Mhz while T-Mobile listens in at 1700Mhz and 2100Mhz. This is the reason 3G iPhones won't work 3G on T-Mobile and the Nexus One will not work 3G on ATT.

http://gigaom.com/2010/01/11/att-nexus-one-3g/

Basically, the T-Mobile phones will work for now, but when upgrade time comes, must switch to ATT phones. The phones are not interchangeable. Within 2 - 5 years ATT can just "no longer support T-Mobile phones" and force everybody else to upgrade that hasn't already. Then, if they're smart, they'll rework the cell towers for T-Mobile to utilize the ATT frequencies. Otherwise, put out phones that listen on all 4 3G bands for GSM. These are the only two ways to possibly bring any better network out of this.

Not so much, actually... It really happened (okay, I was wrong. It was $1400)

http://gigaom.com/apple/in-app-purchases-and-the-smurfberry-affair/

Assuming the same rate, you're correct, but these things change, of course. Also, I was clearly talking about iOS vs. Android, not iPhone vs. Android smartphone, which is what you linked. Apple had the iPad and the iPod to help boost its numbers, which kept it about on pace with Android, hence my statements. I had previously located some graphs from later in the year than the ones you provided, but I can't find them right now. In the meantime, here's another GigaOm article you should read. And here's an article that has some nice graphs on web tracking of iOS vs. Android. It's obviously not as good a metric as raw sales numbers, but it shows the trend I was talking about.

Assuming the same rate, you're correct, but these things change, of course. Also, I was clearly talking about iOS vs. Android, not iPhone vs. Android smartphone, which is what you linked. Apple had the iPad and the iPod to help boost its numbers, which kept it about on pace with Android, hence my statements. I had previously located some graphs from later in the year than the ones you provided, but I can't find them right now. In the meantime, here's another GigaOm article you should read. And here's an article that has some nice graphs on web tracking of iOS vs. Android. It's obviously not as good a metric as raw sales numbers, but it shows the trend I was talking about.

growing at the same rate, essentially meaning that they're keeping pace with each other, but that Apple got the head start.

Two lines growing at the same rate will never intersect. Thus Apple should still be ahead since they got the head start. But that is not the case. If Android's position has changed, which it has, they cannot be growing at identical rates.

Just to preface my comments, I may be an Apple fanboy, but I love Android too, despite what it may sound like here. At the very least, I want to see Android thrive so that Apple is constantly spurred on to innovate. Even better, I want to see it surpass iOS in all regards, because as much as I love Apple, I love good products better. Also, I, personally, don't get this whole tablet thing yet. I think they're great for some people, but I have no plans to buy one for myself anytime soon, since I'd much rather just use my laptop.

Moving on, you follow stuff closely. That's why you, quite reasonably, didn't expect Android to take off in the tablet market last year. Most people don't follow it as closely as you do. That's why there were quite a few people saying that it would happen.

As for pricing, if the competition is going to try and price their products at 80-90% that of the iPad 2, as you suggest, they're in a bad place. At those numbers, the price difference between the "normal" device and the "premium" device is small enough that plenty of people will make the jump. Low-end PCs are significantly cheaper than Macs, so they can make it up in volume by filling in at a price point that is far lower than Apple wants to go, but when going head to head against Apple in the premium market, none of them can hold their own (the last numbers I saw were that Apple had ~90% market share in computers over $1000). The same has been true in the MP3 player market as well, of course.

What really has allowed Android to be the exception is that Android has had a large retail and advertising presence thanks to the backing of the carriers that are using it to fend off market share advances by the iPhone's carriers (normal people don't actually know or care what Android is, so it certainly isn't because of consumer education and awareness, or even branding of Android as a platform). Those Android smart phones were being pushed heavily in their stores, oftentimes as a free upgrade, hence why it was able to pick up so much steam as a platform.

In general, however, iOS adoption is still much higher than Android adoption (see GigaOm from last October, and note also that Apple announced 100M iPhones and 15M iPads sold to date as of this last week), since Apple has their own line of retail and online stores that have been successfully pushing out iOS devices for years. They are leveraging those stores for the iPad 2, but Honeycomb tablet manufacturers have nothing like that going for them. Carriers aren't advertising on TV or making big displays of Honeycomb devices at their retail stores, Apple gets better product placement and treatment in stores like Best Buy or Walmart, and the manufacturers don't have their own retail chains like Apple does.

Not only that, but with the iPad and iPad 2 Apple is starting aggressively in terms of pricing, and no one has managed to make a device in its class that comes in at the sorts of discounts we see in the consumer PC space that allow them to sell in volume. Basically, they're trying to compete in the premium category without premium retail space, or, in many cases, even devices that could be reasonably considered to be premium in terms of build quality and features. And since they lack an ally that will use them as leverage against Apple, I don't see that situation changing anytime soon.

I do recall an infected version of Snow Leopard people were downloading and using. And here's a link about it http://gigaom.com/apple/apple-users-targeted-with-snow-leopard-malware/

Stupid fucking idiots who are too cheap to spend $29 on a copy of Snow Leopard pretty much get what they deserve.

I do recall an infected version of Snow Leopard people were downloading and using.
And here's a link about it http://gigaom.com/apple/apple-users-targeted-with-snow-leopard-malware/

not really: you flip the screen, and get a thick and heavy tablet, with a sucky OS.

Which does not invalidate may argument that netbooks include much more hardware than tablets, yet cost a lot less. Convertible netbooks are not quite as light, thin, and touch-friendly, yet they are cheaper even though their hardware is miles ahead, features- and performance-wise.

Asus's entry: http://gigaom.com/mobile/asus-499-touchscreen-netbook-arriving-soon-in-u-s/

Here's a preview of MeeGo from Mobile World Conference which show that Nokia had no choice.

http://gigaom.com/2011/02/14/meego-preview-shows-why-nokia-embraced-wp7/

Meego looks about as ready for Prime Time as BeOS and certainly not worthy of any high-end mobile solution. But if you truly believe that they'd be better off with this undercooked underdeveloped solution than WP7 (something I suspect you've never actually used) then by all means advise all your friends and family to hold off and get one of those MeeGo tablets that will rock the world.

I'd be shocked if Nokia were "toast". They're still one of the biggest handset makers in the world, and their name recognition alone is worth billions in the market.

Being the biggest handset maker means nothing if you can't make money from your customers. As shown here, Nokia's share of profit in the mobile arena has dropped from 63% in 2007 to 22% in 2010. That is a huge drop in profit when compared to other companies. Basically, Nokia is selling tons of cheap phones but not many expensive ones where all the profits lie. Moreover, companies in China and India are gearing up to move into the cheap phones market also. This means that Nokia would be squeeze from both ends. At the high end by Apple and Android and the low end by the Indian and Chinese phone makes. Nokia's future is looking rather bleak.

Many users find they are bored with the iPad and use it less and less each month.

It's funny you should make that assertion! Too bad it's completely baseless.

From the link I just provided: "77.6 percent of the users found their iPad usage went up after their initial “honeymoon” period."

That doesn't mean *this app* will be successful, but it certainly won't fail for the reason you suggest.

While there may not be any large independent media, each company does effectively operate independently. I doubt AOL Time Warner would particularly worry about publishing information damaging to News Corp, or vice versa. There also Gannett, Disney, and Comcast, and they all effectively hate each other. In fact, being such a large company is detrimental, because each division of each company must work with every other company, and nobody wants to make nice deals with the competition. Pay attention to any of the content-provider contract battles, and this is obvious.

Advertising revenue is usually not tied to the number of sponsorships. It's tied to the number of viewers. Irritating one sponsor, but increasing viewership by 20% is a profitable move for the network. A single network with an exclusive story can also extend favors a targeted company, offering to release rebuttals and host spokespersons.

Given that the world's largest entertainment conglomerate only brought in $38 billion last year, I find it hard to believe that a shady deal's profits would measure in the billions. A hundred million, perhaps, but then that's well within the range of a smart advertising move.

The conspiracy theory, like all such theories, also requires far more cooperation than is feasible. Anyone involved in a large secret deal would also be suitably above the day-to-day dealings of the news branch to not know about the leaked story before it's released. If the news branch were told not to release any stories about certain rivals, that lets a few hundred people know that a secret deal is taking place. People don't keep secrets that well.

hahahaha what? Is this a troll?

ARM's are running over 1ghz and are now onto dual cores with plans and support for more cores.

ARM is also substantially more efficient and runs better than X86.

ARM is already performing as well as core2 stuff from Intel. ARM also has no issues decoding H264, but apparently you were unaware that ARM processors can be coupled with graphics like the SGS and Tegra stuff.

It is already being predicted that arm will be faster in 2-3 years. It's catching up must faster than Intel is moving forward.

This article is stupid. It's comparing a single smartphone to an entire platform running on multiple smartphones. When you compare platforms, iOS is #1 in U.S. marketshare according to the recent Nielsen report.

Beware of what's being counted, and how.

The Nielsen report you cited lumps iPad users in with iPhone users. That's hardly a single platform; the iPad is far more akin to a laptop or netbook in terms of "mobility" than a smartphone. It's also based on Nielsen's Web usage monitoring, and it's well-known that iPad users are very heavy Web browsers -- mostly from home.

Overall, I find the tech "journalism" about this issue to be a dismal example of the innumeracy that mars much of the profession. Reading tech blogs, I can't tell what's being counted: Web unique users? Pageviews? Units sold? Units in a distribution pipeline? Activated smartphone accounts?

Each number has its own importance to different interested parties. Fanbois can pick the one that reinforces their word view. Those of us building mobile websites or applications need to know the difference between users and usage, and between the iPad and the iPhone.

What I've found, looking at (I am being very specific here) mobile Web pageview counts by users of pocket-sized devices connected to mobile networks, is that Android smartphones are racing way, way, way ahead of the iPhone.

I don't really care that some of the devices are made by Motorola and some by Samsung and some by LG, because I'm not fanboi-ing for any manufacturer; I'm just trying to understand how the mobile market is unfolding for planning purposes.

If I were planning to develop an app, that information would be an important factor in prioritizing my platform targeting. (I actually am persuaded by this and other data that standards-based HTML5 mobile Web, is the better place to focus.)

Incidentally, the same data set tells me that Blackberry users pretty much stick to email and barely show up on the mobile Web. Windows Mobile is every bit as dead as everybody expected.

Look, don't mind me. Follow the leader. No skin off my back.

Here's a deal: you don't bogusly assume I'm a blind fanboy adherent of the Cult Of Apple and I won't bogusly assume you're one of those people who thinks buying an Android phone is somehow Striking A Blow Against The Empire.

I've followed Jobs & Co for nearly 35 years and I've seen how he operates. Apple only lets others play in their game when they have no other choice. Jobs compulsion to control everything is legendary. If they have to, they'll let others play, as long as they play by Apple's rules. The minute they feel they can survive without third party developers, believe me, they'll cut them out. However, never before has the opportunity presented itself where Apple could do without third party developers. This began to change with the iPhone and the App store.

And what exactly is it about a store to sell third-party applications that's an indication that Apple can do without third-party developers? If they didn't want third-party developers, they, err, umm, wouldn't have published an SDK and created an app store. Or do you mean that so many third-party apps have been developed that Apple has figured out that they don't need them?

Apple has already reached critical mass and they don't really need any more fart apps in the store. Apple's reasoning (and I believe they are correct)

...and you also believe that is, in fact, their reasoning...

is that most people (outside the tech world) will buy the iPhone because of the brand and whether there are 300,000 apps in the app store or just a few thousand "good" apps won't matter. They will still maintain their market share. Once the "app envy" fad passes and Apple decides which apps are worth keeping in the store (for marketing, financial or other reasons) they can simply buy out, set up royalty agreements with, or make any number of other arrangements with the "good" apps and they can then easily shut the doors to outside vendors.

...because, of course, once you have those "good" apps, there will never ever ever ever ever ever ever be any need for a new application ever again, other than the ones you think of. If Apple starts thinking that all the smart people work for them, they're fucked.

They've already made it abundantly clear that the iOS devices are intended to be seen as "appliances" that they really don't want outsiders tampering with.

"Tampering" in what sense? No, you can't write a kext or a program that requires, say, root privileges, but you can add new applications, and develop hardware that attaches to the dock connector. (The word "appliance" is overused, BTW; if it accepts third-party applications, it might not be a self-hosting device that can be used to develop applications for the device, but it's more than a sealed-box "appliance".)

The last figures I saw, the desktop/laptop segment only accounted for around 15% of Apple's revenue.

And what figures were those? According to this chart for the calendar Q4 2010 hardware revenue, it's a little over 25% of the hardware revenue; if that's 15% of total revenue, hardware would be about 60% of total revenue. The Q4 2010 iTunes Store revenue was "over $1 billion", but the Q4 2010 total revenue was $20 billion, so either there's another significant non-hardware revenue category, there's a significant hardware revenue category other than Mac, iPhones, iPods, and iPads, Apple made a lot of money from servers, or the iTunes Store revenue was a lot over $1 billion, if the desktop/laptop segment (non-server Macs) were only around 15% of revenue in Q4 2010.

By a wide margin, the iP

This article is stupid. It's comparing a single smartphone to an entire platform running on multiple smartphones. When you compare platforms, iOS is #1 in U.S. marketshare according to the recent Nielsen report.

smartphone market (complete ownership with Android and WP7 fighting for the left over scraps)

At least in 2009 (I haven't looked up 2010)
The Blackberry phones outsold iPhones (revenue and units sold) and as usual, Nokia dwarfs them all (in market share).

Granted Apple has done quite well in the MP3 player market, and with its excellent profit margin it is certainly an extremely successful company. But let's compare Apple (market cap $296 billion) to Exxon Mobil (market cap $377 billion).

Exxon Mobil's 2010 profits of $19 Billion on $285 Billion in revenue completely dwarf Apple's 2010 profit of $6 billion on $36 billion in revenue. Granted Apple has a higher profit margin than Exxon Mobil, but in 2009 Exxon Mobil's profits were greater than Apple's revenue.

Both companies are certainly successful, but I suspect Apple's stock price has more to do with its image than its value.

smartphone market (complete ownership with Android and WP7 fighting for the left over scraps)

At least in 2009 (I haven't looked up 2010)
The Blackberry phones outsold iPhones (revenue and units sold) and as usual, Nokia dwarfs them all (in market share).

Granted Apple has done quite well in the MP3 player market, and with its excellent profit margin it is certainly an extremely successful company. But let's compare Apple (market cap $296 billion) to Exxon Mobil (market cap $377 billion).

Exxon Mobil's 2010 profits of $19 Billion on $285 Billion in revenue completely dwarf Apple's 2010 profit of $6 billion on $36 billion in revenue. Granted Apple has a higher profit margin than Exxon Mobil, but in 2009 Exxon Mobil's profits were greater than Apple's revenue.

Both companies are certainly successful, but I suspect Apple's stock price has more to do with its image than its value.

FaceTime is also built-in into all the new iPhones and iPod touches, will be in the next iPad and there's also a beta version for Mac OS X, not to mention rumors of FaceTime for Windows. Is the userbase of FaceTime already bigger than Skype?

No?

In what world is this even remotely possible?

From this source we can see that:

Skype added 39 million registered users in the fourth quarter to end the year with a total of 560 million.

36 percent of Skype-to-Skype calls as of the end of the fourth quarter included video

At peak times, 23 million users are logged into Skype (as of March 2010).

Only 47 million iPhones and eight or so million iPads were sold in 2010.

So you could make a claim that iStuff was growing faster than Skype, you would have no basis for claiming that it was already a larger userbase.

Remember, these are SKYPE USERS compared to iSTUFF OWNERS. Those owners may or may not even be aware FaceTime is on their device.

http://gigaom.com/video/vlc-for-android-coming-soon/

Not that there's much to it.

I wouldn't say they didn't need the data...
SSIDs are geopoints are required if you're going to put together your own aGPS service as an alternative to SkyHook.

As was pointed out in the comment I originally replied to, if you allow your phone to interact with an Exchange server, you end up giving the Exchange admins the ability to do a LOT of things to your phone without your knowledge.

Including, erasing everything saved on the phone.

I am not willing to give up that level of control.

If I'm on call, or if my employer wants to replace my desk phone with a cellular one to make it easier to reach me, or they want me to be able to read and respond to email from my phone, I'm perfectly happy carrying two phones.

But if I'm on my own time and I'm not on call, the work phone goes on a shelf, and it may or may not get turned off in the process.