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Here's some more info. Yep it's just a brand name. The WIFi alliance referred to it in slogans as wireless fidelity though, even though it doesn't mean anything, and apparently now they're trying to backtrack on it.

http://www.teleclick.ca/2005/12/what-is-the-true-meaning-of-wi-fi/

• virtualization (not really new but) -- Microsoft buys Connectix
• innovative utilities -- Winternals
  
• anti-spyware -- Giant
• VOIP -- Teleco Inc.

</sarcasm> </rant> </bloodpressure>

There are other ways to judge the magnitude of the business success which iPhone achieved. AT&T said that they've never had a device launch sell so many units, ever. That's pretty amazing when you think about it. The Motorola RAZR, which is now one of the most popular phones (if not the most popular phone) on the market, had a massive PR campaign which preceded its launch, just like iPhone. The devices which have been launched prior to iPhone were launched by established players using established distribution channels.

Here's another interesting bit... Google the two phones, iPhone, and RAZR.
Results 1 - 10 of about 174,000,000 for iphone. (0.06 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 17,700,000 for RAZR. (0.12 seconds)

Clearly there must be some amount of grass roots level interest in iPhone, which doesn't exist for the Motorola RAZR phone which was probably the hottest selling single model of phone for most of 2005 and 2006. (Nokia's response to the RAZR hegemony was to proliferate models and offer a wider array of "choice", basically external styling with features randomly mixed and matched in ways that made little sense. The strategy, combined with software that, in general, sucked less than the RAZR software, worked.)

Motorola Loses Cell Phone Market Share to Samsung and Nokia

The established players compete in a very dynamic market, with relatively large shifts in market position every year or so. Apple might well capture an interesting portion of that market. Sure, a few geeks like us are pretty annoyed by the twisted nature of the cell phone market, with private networks and exclusive vendor lock-in contracts. The bulk of the market doesn't yet have the sophistication to be aware of the possibilities. Or maybe they do. Maybe they see the worthless pile of poo which is the virus laden botnet zombie PC in their den, and they realize that the trade offs might be worth it. If cell phone networks remain free of this plague, maybe just maybe it's worth it for my phone to remain useful without the consumer spending untold zillions of hours "keeping it secure". Maybe they give up their freedoms willingly, in exchange for a device that "just works" quite a bit better than their home PC. OK, I doubt that there is this level of conscious analysis going on. OK, there clearly isn't. But it was a fun little thought experiment, before I woke up just now. Anyway, the market doesn't care about the things that tick you, and a handful of other gadget geeks, off. iPhone will continue to be an amazing market success, if Apple continues to build successive generations of the device which continue to improve in capability and performance, as they have done with the Macintosh and the iPod. You really don't need to wait for a few years of market data to see where this is going.

iPhone success is nearly as much a story about the *failure* of these previous phones to satisfy the cell phone using public as it is about the iPhone itself. Sure, iPhone isn't perfect, but it's already solved a number of problems that plagued previous phones, and you are already seeing the other cell phone vendors trying to catch up. iPhone software has been updated 3 times already. How many times has the crap software on the RAZR been updated? Exactly zero. To get newer firmware on a RAZR you have to flash it yourself with underground grey market flash images and risk bricking the phone, mind you, or *buy a new phone*. The first many millions of consumers who bought the RAZR had to contend with serious software defects over the life of the device that could not be fixed. Well, which the vendor(s) refused to fix, really. Consumers have been burned by previous love affairs with phones made by companies that thought their customer was the cell phone company, not the cell phone user.

Finally, there is the price of AAPL, compared to vendors of other cell phone platf

The last time I looked at changing cellphone carriers, my PRIMARY concern was looking for a carrier that wasn't involved in the NSA illegal wiretapping. ATT/Cingular were, of course, up to their necks in it, and other carriers admitted to being involved. But, at the time, I couldn't find anything about Sprint being involved and they had denied it. So, even with their horrible customer service, I stuck with Sprint. After seeing this article, I decided to start snooping around for more information. It isn't necessarily bad that Sprint runs a private network for the government, as long as it isn't abused. But then I found this: Sprint implicated in illegal NSA program. So, combined with my previous research, this means that EVERY MAJOR CELL CARRIER was involved in the NSA program. Conservatives will tell you that you have to vote with your wallet to change companies' behavior. Support the ones that don't allow illegally wiretapping, right? Well, when every major cell carrier is involved, and then, to make matters worse, they keep MERGING with one another, where do you turn? If the Constitution doesn't stop them, and the law doesn't stop them, and we can't select a company that is good because one doesn't exist, what are we to to? Our elected officials aren't listening. Just in terms of a cell carrier: is it possible to find one that probably wasn't involved in this crap?

According to this, they plan to use 2155-2175 MHz, not 20 MHz. After all the nonsense with BPL. I was afraid that someone else was stupid enough to propose using HF for short-range data transmission.

3G/EDGE looks like a promising technology for the US cellphone market, I'm really looking forward to WiMAX which seems to be implemented from every country except the US (but it is getting closer). As far as San Fran and New Orleans deploying 802.11 networks.. as an information architecture consultant for the City of New York it only strikes me as par for municipal governments to take medoicre advice and implement mediocre solutions.