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No it is not. The statement is based on factual, financial reports and a bit of analysis.
http://www.intomobile.com/2010/07/22/apple-iphone-has-totally-dominated-the-smartphone-market/

It's also true of their computer sales:
http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-revenue-vs-operating-profit-share-of-top-pc-vendors-2010-3

Nope, it is mandatory fee. Doesn't matter if you get can't get 4g in the city you live in. Please read: http://www.intomobile.com/2010/05/14/sprint-charging-mandatory-10-for-4g-data-on-htc-evo-4g-even-if-youre-in-a-3g-only-market/

Android Gingerbread Build Due Q4 with WebM

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/atts_first_android_phone_doesnt_allow_nonmarket_apps
http://www.intomobile.com/2010/06/05/sprint-htc-evo-4g-ota-update-here-to-save-your-sd-card-issues-and-kill-your-root-acces/

So.... uh... "black!"

Ringtones are in decline, but full-track downloads for cell phone use now constitute billions of dollars in revenues.

"Juniper Research's latest report argues that a sharp fall in ringtone revenues will be more than offset by growth in full-track downloads, streamed music services and ringback tones. As a matter of fact, the research company forecasts that global revenues from mobile music services will reach nearly $14.6 billion by 2013."

See: http://www.intomobile.com/2009/02/27/juniper-research-ringtone-sales-may-go-down-but-mobile-music-revenues-are-set-to-reach-146-billion-by-2013/

So, how can Microsoft guarantee its Windows Phone 7 devices will enjoy broader adoption than the ill-fated Kin? By giving every Microsoft employee a free one, that's how

I'm sorry but this is a stupid statement and a stupid article.

No, you really missed the point. They seriously sold like 500 to 1000 kin phones, so handing out 90,000 of these phones is two orders of magnitude greater. Guaranteed greater marketshare. Of course MS used to be able to sell Windows phones before there were things that were much better and easier to use, but that's in significant doubt now. Sure, they'll be able to sell some, but I'd be extremely surprised if they crack significant market share. If they do it will be by one of two ways: actually creating one of the best products they ever have in order to compete, or the same old dirty business tricks that made dos, windows, exchange, etc successful.

I guess $24,000,000 is peanuts compared to the likes of the $7 billion deal NSN made with Harbinger Capital Partners to build Light Squared: http://www.intomobile.com/2010/07/20/lightsquared/

Antenna design for hand-held devices at these frequencies and power levels is not exactly trivial, and minimizing the effect of the human body (hand) on the antenna characteristics is the subject of much research in the industry.

http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&fileOId=1152137

http://www.rfm.com/corp/appdata/antenna.pdf

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120848913/articletext?DOI=10.1002%2Fmop.23715

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/11208/36089/01710996.pdf

http://e-citations.ethbib.ethz.ch/view/pub:18638

http://www.waset.org/journals/waset/v49/v49-156.pdf

http://www.amazon.com/Hands-effect-Shahla-Moradi-Shahrbabak/dp/3639175425

http://www.google.com/search?q=effect+of+hand+on+antenna&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&ei=GbZBTOP-NIP-8Aaw_aUZ&start=10&sa=N

http://rfdesign.com/mag/505RFDF1.pdf

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijap/2009/491262.html

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F4913660%2F4957855%2F04958011.pdf%3Farnumber%3D4958011&authDecision=-203

http://wireless.per.nl/wireless/articles/08_WIC_correlated_coupled_MIMO.pdf

http://www.impinj.com/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=2563>

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.66.2119&rep=rep1&type=pdf

http://202.194.20.8/proc/VTC09Spring/DATA/02-07-08.PDF

AND THAT'S IN JUST THE FIRST THREE PAGES OF MY GOOGLE SEARCH!!!!!!!!!!

Note that this "antennaphile" site called the iPhone 4's antenna design "cool", and said to expect to see other manufacturers adopting similar designs.

Note that the forum thread linked below says that your hand can affect a GHz-band antenna from as far way as 3cm. So where on a phone that is FAR less than 1cm. thick are you going to place that antenna that WON'T have "hand-effects" to some degree? Now, factor in the fact that the FCC MANDATES that the antenna be on the LOWER half of the phone (where your hand naturally grips!), and you can readily see that, as Jobs stated (and demonstrated), EVERY cellphone suffers from the presence of the user. Keep that in mind when you hear people proclaim "NO other phone has these issues." WRONG! EVERY cellphone struggles mightily with this limitation (the presence of the user), during EVERY SINGLE CALL and with EVERY SINGLE USER.

I don't know what the situation is today, but in the past this functionality was definitely not available to Verizon Wireless users. VZ disabled direct connections to the USB port so the only way to transfer pictures to and from the phone was via a data connection over its network or via an SD card if the phone has that capability. In general you had to email or text the photos to yourself and pay any consequent data charges.

I'd venture to guess that it's still the case that most cellphone users never use their USB cables to transfer anything. They take pictures on their phones and use them as local wallpapers or hold them up so their friends can see them on the screen. The market for ringtones and sales of music tracks for phones is estimated to exceed $10B in the next few years. I have a technologically sophisticated teen-aged daughter who could move stuff to any from her phone over USB the same way she does with her Sansa player. Most of her friends wouldn't have the slightest idea how to accomplish any of that.

I only buy unlocked phones to avoid these problems.

I disagree, but feel free to enlighten me.

Ok, I will.

Antenna design for hand-held devices at these frequencies and power levels is not exactly trivial, and minimizing the effect of the human body (hand) on the antenna characteristics is the subject of much research in the industry.

http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&fileOId=1152137

http://www.rfm.com/corp/appdata/antenna.pdf

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120848913/articletext?DOI=10.1002%2Fmop.23715

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/11208/36089/01710996.pdf

http://e-citations.ethbib.ethz.ch/view/pub:18638

http://www.waset.org/journals/waset/v49/v49-156.pdf

http://www.amazon.com/Hands-effect-Shahla-Moradi-Shahrbabak/dp/3639175425

http://www.google.com/search?q=effect+of+hand+on+antenna&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&ei=GbZBTOP-NIP-8Aaw_aUZ&start=10&sa=N

http://rfdesign.com/mag/505RFDF1.pdf

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijap/2009/491262.html

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F4913660%2F4957855%2F04958011.pdf%3Farnumber%3D4958011&authDecision=-203

http://wireless.per.nl/wireless/articles/08_WIC_correlated_coupled_MIMO.pdf

http://www.impinj.com/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=2563>

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.66.2119&rep=rep1&type=pdf

http://202.194.20.8/proc/VTC09Spring/DATA/02-07-08.PDF

AND THAT'S IN JUST THE FIRST THREE PAGES OF MY GOOGLE SEARCH!!!!!!!!!!

Note that this "antennaphile" site called the iPhone 4's antenna design "cool", and said to expect to see other manufacturers adopting similar designs.

Note that the forum thread linked below says that your hand can affect a GHz-band antenna from as far way as 3cm. So where on a phone that is FAR less than 1cm. thick are you going to place that antenna that WON'T have "hand-effects" to some degree? Now, factor in the fact that the FCC MANDATES that the antenna be on the LOWER half of the phone (where your hand naturally grips!), and you can readily see that, as Jobs stated (and demonstrated), EVERY cellphone suffers from the presence of the user. Keep that in mind when you hear people proclaim "NO other phone has these issues." WRONG! EVERY cellphone struggles mightily with this limitation (the presence of the user

In my world: You buy a product. It's crap. You get a refund and don't buy again from the company.

Here you go, you really should have provided a link to prove that apple will do a return on the iCrap. Ug, I mean iPhone http://www.intomobile.com/2010/07/05/apple-waiving-10-restocking-fee-for-returned-iphones/

One tiny detail we overlooked in Apple’s last statement confirming the iPhone 4/iOS 4 reception problem was “if you are not fully satisfied, you can return your undamaged iPhone to any Apple Retail Store or the online Apple Store within 30 days of purchase for a full refund.” Apparently this includes a change where Apple Stores won’t charge the usual 10% restocking fee, in this case $19.90 for the 16 GB iPhone 4 and $29.90 for the 32 GB version.

I hate apple, but that just answered a question for me about apple consumers along with the company itself.

The company is honoring its return policy.

Only an apple zombie would keep a defective product when they could return it for a full refund. Are people really this stupid? Seriously, are they?

I just attached iPad accessory keyboard to the iPhone:
http://images.intomobile.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/iphone-ipad-keyboard-dock-536x357.jpg

It looks surprisingly chic and I get compliments all the time since that is how I always carry my phone now. I now laugh at people carrying androids with those slide-out keyboards!

"No, it's just an explanation of why the whole flash argument (particularly Adobe's constant whining) was so silly. We're just now starting to see usable Flash on any mobile devices. If Flash is so useful on a mobile phone, why hasn't Adobe shown us?"

Actually, they have, since 2008. And more coming, real soon now. As in 'maybe'. But Adobe is trying.

The value argument for Flash on mobiel devices is the same one for desktop devices. Web pages that use Flash are not useful on mobile devices, and the iPad is a mobile device offering a similar, if not indistinguishable, Web experience like desktop devices. Apple just wants to keep Flash off until it plays nice with iOS, to improve the reputation of iOS.

"While Apple has presented a number of different reasons why they don't want flash on iOS, one of their main examples is that flash would be a buggy, CPU and battery hog."

Describes Flash on my notebook and desktop perfectly, save that my desktop doesn't have a battery. But we tolerate it on those devices, because they have the horsepower and resources to run Flash tolerably.

"if flash is as important and useful as Adobe says, then eventually consumers will demand it, and Apple will adapt or lose out."

Consumers ARE demanding it. So far, it's not a show-stopper for Apple or Android users. Blackberry I dunno.

And, should you exceed the 5GB/month limit on your “unlimited” plan, Verizon will “reduce throughput speeds of any application that would otherwise exceed such speed to a maximum of approximately 200Kbps” – with actual speeds “subject to change.

It remains functionally unlimited, and the same type of cap pre-5GB applies: connection speed. Just a different speed.

Also, those that say things like "Apple should allow Flash" seem to be ignorant of the fact that Flash is not on a single handheld device, except as a very recent beta for Android.

Not true. Flash Lite is already shipping on some phones, including the HTC Hero and Evo. It's not Flash Player 10.1, which is the beta you mentioned (and that beta is available for Android 2.2 users to try for themselves), but it's enough for many popular sites.

That's not Flash, it's a subset of Flash.

Cocoa Touch on the iPhone OS. As well as HTML5. There are zero cases where Flash is technologically better than both of those.

Flash is more portable than Cocoa Touch. It's more powerful than HTML5 and also has better development/design tools.

And neither of those are cases "where Flash is technologically better than both of those".

As a solution for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, the combination of Cocoa Touch and HTML5 thoroughly outclasses Flash.

It's also far from clear that supporting Flash would be to Apple's benefit, and a watered-down version would be even worse.

Apple's benefit? Of course, they'd rather have you use their proprietary APIs. But isn't their customers' benefit what really matters?

The customer's benefit is Apple's benefit. If Apple does a good job of seeing to the needs of their customers, they will sell more products, and as it turns out, they do sell very, very well. It's only in monopoly-like situations where a company can blatantly work against their customers' needs, like Microsoft (not so much of a monopoly anymore, and surprise, surprise, Windows 7 doesn't completely suck, and IE is becoming more secure and standards-compliant!), or Comcast.

Apple has no monopoly, so they have to actually create products that are innately attractive to consumers.

As for the watered-down version: again, you're ignoring Flash Lite, which is certainly better than no Flash at all.

How am I ignoring it? I addressed it right there. And no, it's not clear at all that it's better than nothing. No Flash means no Flash. Flash Lite means some Flash works and some doesn't. And that doesn't even address the issue of most Flash being entirely unsuitable for multitouch.

Better to just have none of it than to have a broken, incompatible variant. And the proper, official variant is by no means compelling at this point. If Adobe can make a version that runs nicely on mobile hardware and integrates properly with multitouch, the case for Apple to include it would be more reasonable. But right now, the existing Flash 10.1 for Android does not make a compelling case for it.

Also, those that say things like "Apple should allow Flash" seem to be ignorant of the fact that Flash is not on a single handheld device, except as a very recent beta for Android.

Not true. Flash Lite is already shipping on some phones, including the HTC Hero and Evo. It's not Flash Player 10.1, which is the beta you mentioned (and that beta is available for Android 2.2 users to try for themselves), but it's enough for many popular sites.

Cocoa Touch on the iPhone OS. As well as HTML5. There are zero cases where Flash is technologically better than both of those.

Flash is more portable than Cocoa Touch. It's more powerful than HTML5 and also has better development/design tools.

It's also far from clear that supporting Flash would be to Apple's benefit, and a watered-down version would be even worse.

Apple's benefit? Of course, they'd rather have you use their proprietary APIs. But isn't their customers' benefit what really matters?

As for the watered-down version: again, you're ignoring Flash Lite, which is certainly better than no Flash at all.

Supposedly, Fennec was not going to be released on Android, because it would have to be converted to the Java-like language of Android. However, they released another SDK, allowing developers to code in C/C++. This made Android a viable option again. [Source: http://www.intomobile.com/2009/06/30/fennec-coming-to-android.html]

So, for those keeping score, Android apps can be written in Android's Java derivative as well as C/C++ (all 3 are popular among developers), while iPhone apps have to be written in Obj-C, which is really only used in the Apple universe.

Oh, and, the developer tools are cheaper too (http://blog.radioactiveyak.com/2008/03/android-v-iphone-sdk-showdown.html)

"That's a place we don't want to go - so we're not going to go there."
http://www.intomobile.com/2010/04/20/steve-jobs-if-you-want-porn-buy-android.html

The original announcement said that there would be a Bluetooth keyboard available, although I haven't bothered to check if it's available now.

The standard iMac bluetooth keyboard works with the iPad.

T-Mobile released the HTC HD2 today.

Here is a superficial comparison of the Evo to the HD2.

For Windows Mobile fans like me who are not happy with the the direction Microsoft is going with WF7, the HD2 seems to be the last Hurrah for Windows Mobile 6.x series before we are forced to walk the plank and jump to another platform.

Just because the iPhone has similar functionality built in doesn't mean 3rd party vendors shouldn't be able to compete.

Apple dosn't see it that way. They openly reject competition with Apple software on the iPhone.

http://www.intomobile.com/2009/06/16/iphone-os-30-can-stream-internet-radio-in-the-background.html

Found this interesting, granted this A9 board is not running at 2ghz but is already very competitive with Atom. http://www.intomobile.com/2010/01/06/video-500-mhz-dual-core-arm-cortex-a9-vs-1-6-ghz-intel-atom-coming-to-a-smartphone-soon.html

http://www.intomobile.com/2009/11/12/apple-iphone-takes-third-place-in-q3-global-smartphone-sales.html

Nokia is the king.
RIM behind them.

And finally Apple in third place. So, no, Apple and iPhone isn't the king of anything in the cellphone market.

Third in market share, but first in profit share.
http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20090804/iphone-claims-32-percent-of-handset-industry-operating-profits/

http://www.intomobile.com/2009/11/12/apple-iphone-takes-third-place-in-q3-global-smartphone-sales.html

Nokia is the king.
RIM behind them.

And finally Apple in third place. So, no, Apple and iPhone isn't the king of anything in the cellphone market.

Where'd you get the 4%? Currently, it looks like Apple has 10+% of global smartphones and almost a third of the US market.

Accepted, I also found this while looking:
http://www.intomobile.com/2009/10/23/corrections-arm-cortex-a8-qualcomm-snapdragon-and-marvell-armada-oh-my.html

WinMo held less than 15% of the smartphone market last year. That's not "extremely popular". In tech-savvy Japan iPhone share has reached almost half. WiMo has negative growth. In fact one Gartner (we can trust Microsoft's friend Gartner not to skew the numbers away from Redmond, right?) analyst has WiMo share at a meek 7.9% in 3Q 2009, off 28% from a year before.

"From one side, the market is going open source," Cozza said. "We expect that, by 2012, around 62 percent of the whole smart phone market will be open source with Symbian, Android and other Linux flavours. On the other side, they have more closed environments like Apple and RIM. Microsoft is caught in the middle. They have to think hard what they can do."

"All their licensees - HTC, Samsung, Sony Ericsson - are developing on Android," Cozza said, adding that previous licensees Palm and Motorola have both abandoned Windows Mobile.

I'll agree about the ringtones thing, though - they're idiots. The thing is, there are a lot of idiots. Ringtones made up $500M in sales last year. It's shrinking fast, but to most people half a billion dollars is still a lot of money.

An important thing to note is that two or three year contracts are the norm in cell phones, so if you lose 28% of customers year over year, that's essentially everybody who could ditch your product for free. I'll say it again: that's not popular.

Now show me how I can't back my shit up.

First of all, these two statements are completely incompatible

Not necessarily. Best example: The xbox 360 is an awesome gaming console, but the older versions still had horrendous reliability. Hence, it did its job as a gaming console well, but that doesn't make it a well designed piece of hardware.

Second, what are the iPhone's glaringly bad issues?

To name a few of the more obvious ones...

Sync issues (admittedly, this is more due to iTunes being bad software rather than the iPhone being bad hardware, but still...), problems with many new firmware rollouts (for example the random shutdowns and decreased battery life of 3.1), no MMS until just a couple of short months ago, Appstore approval inconsistencies (again, not an issue with the phone itself, but I doubt you could convince anyone the iPhone would be the success it is without the Appstore)...oh, and that little problem with randomly catching fire.

It's not a Droid, it's a Milestone.

wtf? Motorola too cheep to pay Lucus Films licensing of the world-wide rights for that questionable trademark?

But does Google Android support the Three Laws?

(Also, the numbers Americans throw around for their cell phone contracts scare me - $100 a month or more? Do they deliver your data to you in gold-plated USB sticks or something?)

But Verizon told me they are cheaper than Europe.

Actually if Qualcomm has their way all the smartphones will be running a Qualcomm Snapdragon with a Qualcomm Scorpion CPU, their superpipelined version of the Cortex A9.

A Snapdragon should run at 1 GHz (Cortext A9 is 600 MHz on a comparable process), from what I've read the A5 will be 480 MHz on a 40nm process.

So the A5 is aimed at cheaper devices than the Snapdragon. Of course the A5/A9 are presumably available to all ARM licensees whereas the Snapdragon is as far as I can tell only going to be manufactured by Qualcomm.

It seems Switzerland beat Finland to it: http://www.intomobile.com/2009/10/14/finland-becomes-the-first-country-to-make-broadband-a-legal-right.html (scroll down to the update).

The iPhone does have a 99% satisfaction rating.

yes u are right obviously :) http://www.fashno.com/

The iPhone does have a 99% satisfaction rating.

Verizon Android Phones Are Officially Coming.

There exists a pretty strong misunderstanding that Verizon "locks down" their phones. They did, yes. But in the past year, they've stopped disabling GPS on their phones (including the Omnia, Storm and Tour), said that all future Blackberries will have Wifi, and launched their Open Development Initiative to get data devices (among other things) on their network.

Oh, and their next generation network (which is launching 2+ years before AT&T's) is LTE, based off the GSM standard.

But I don't blame you, they've definitely had restrictive tendencies in the past.

Not any more.

http://www.intomobile.com/2008/10/21/apple-iphone-nda-termination-spurs-open-source-iphone-development.html

Not sure if it blends, but there is a cool video of it being tested here

Virtual Light type geohacking would need a device that was aware of it's physical orientation, not just it's location. You would, in effect, need a three dimensionally operational compass, not just an accelerometer. Given the vagries of GPS, you'd also need differential lock-in. I suppose you might be able to do that with bluetooth, if you had smarter hardware giving the differential back to you from you talking to it, to give the offset bias, rather than trying to do the processing on the phone itself, without the necessary timing hooks and resolution in the software stack there (remember, you are being isolated from the hardware by SDKs).

I'm not sure you'll be seeing something like Tonchidot's demo http://www.intomobile.com/2008/09/17/tonchidots-sekai-camera-iphone-application-augmented-reality-coming-to-iphone.html in real life any time soon.

-- Terry

...but this isn't exactly new, even on phones.

...but this isn't exactly new, even on phones.

i think he has a sectera edge, which is a sort of military grade blackberry. as such, you can bet he is immune from the kind of attack mentioned in the summary

slashdot noted this already, with the rumor that he has a blackberry and a sectera. this is absurd because:

1. the sectera has civilian and military network abilities, so it would be doubly redundant to have both a blackberry and sectera, since a sectera is pretty much already a blackberry+

2. since we are talking about top level extremely sensitive communications, rumors about the reality of his communication device is all any of us will hear about, as a rule. and probably with purposeful misdirection about what obama is actually using thrown in to boot: let the yokels believe what they want to believe about his communication device and the "stories" aka myths about him keeping his blackberry. uh huh. anyone, anywhere, writing about what obama is using is either guessing or lying. the more the certainty and conviction they have about what his communication device is, the sillier they are. the only people who know for sure what obama is communicating with on the go are probably a few tight-lipped spooks at the nsa. and if they talk, they are about to lose their job and are going to be heavily prosecuted about disclosing obviously extremely senstive national security details of obama's mobile communication situation. all obama cares about is the convenience of qwerty keyboard email on the go in a cellphone. switch a real blackberry with a sectera edge, he is happy. he's married to the convenience, not an actual brand of device

3. but i think most convincingly, when someone talks about obama keeping his "blackberry", i think they are using the word "blackberry" the way some people use "xerox": that is, like the word xerox has become a rough synonym for copying a piece of paper, i think blackberry is so ubiquitous now, any shiny brick with a full qwerty keyboard can be called a "blackberry" in common parlance, or soon will be. that's all the sectera edge is: a blackberry rip off with ultrahigh security. and that's most probably what obam is using

I may have phrased it poorly; I was (mis)using it in the web hosting sense.
I was thinking of capping transfers, Like verizon does

You mean like this?

So has Live Search. http://www.intomobile.com/2007/10/19/windows-live-search-mobile-gets-updated-speechvoice-recognition.html Anyone care again? Yeah, no, not really.

Hmm ... ELIZA + a speech synthesizer + some way to get free incoming calls = lots of wasted telemarketer time. It probably wouldn't take too long to get something like that set up with VoiP, either.

You would have to have Speech Recognition software attached to eliza but it could be done.

Hmm ... ELIZA + a speech synthesizer + some way to get free incoming calls = lots of wasted telemarketer time. It probably wouldn't take too long to get something like that set up with VoiP, either.

The iPhone has 2.8% market share as of August 2008. It's not even close to being the #1 smartphone in the US. Keep drinking that tasty koolaid though.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/smartphones/iphone-greedily-eats-north-american-market-share-334516.php

Canalys has produced a report showing the iPhone has grown massively in North America. The study looked specifically at smartphone market share statistics in Q3, and the iPhone, in a surprisingly short time span, has managed to grab second position. A 27% market share is nothing to scoff at; what Apple has done in a few months, others have failed to do in years.

This was during the quarter that Apple was basically not manufacturing 1st gen iPhones....
http://www.intomobile.com/2008/06/03/palm-centro-boosts-palm-marketshare-rim-sees-blackberry-market-share-rise-apple-loses-in-iphone-market.html

But, there's always two sides to every story. While RIM and Palm saw their market-share increase, Apple saw its market-share slide. The iPhone took a healthy US smartphone market-share of 26.7% in the fourth quarter last year. But, it seems that RIM and Palm's success has eaten in to the iPhone's niche. The iPhone accounted for just 19.2% of smartphones sales in the first quarter of 2008, compared to 26.7% of sales in Q4 2007.

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2227601/apple-iphone-gains-market-share
Oct 7, 2008

The handset now accounts for 17 per cent of the market, second only to Motorola's RazR2. Before the iPhone 3G launch Apple's market share was 11 per cent. ....
Rubin noted that the iPhone is now outselling the BlackBerry Curve, BlackBerry Pearl and Palm Centro, making it the number one smartphone in the US.

The three European distributors of the iPhone 'sold 330,000 units to the end of December, but industry sources say that European sales of the iPhone were forecast to be between 500,000 and 600,000.'"

That's a really poor showing. The Nokia N95 sold more than a million units in the UK alone in 2007; that's a single model and a single country, and it didn't have anywhere near the hype surrounding the iPhone release:

http://www.intomobile.com/2007/11/28/brief-nokia-n95-sales-in-the-uk-top-1-million.html

I can't figure out why anybody would buy an iPhone: it's a clunky phone with clunky desktop integration. Adding 3G doesn't change that.

The crappy screen is a good reason not to purchase. Check Apple's support forums, look at all the threads about malfunctioning displays (some even without proper coatings?) and you might think twice. I'd have bought one months ago except for the screen issues.
 
If you don't get the "bad coating" effect then watch out for the halo effect.