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Apple Losing Touchscreen War
An anonymous reader writes "While Apple's iPhone may be the first device most people call to mind when they think of a touch interface mobile, the 3G device is still lagging behind in the touchscreen shifting stakes — it's getting a sound thrashing from Moto and Samsung, who've cornered the Asian market where touchscreens are popular for their ability to let users input Asian languages without all that fiddly Qwerty nonsense."
Steve Jobs is not a human with a reality distortion field, Steve Jobs is a reality distortion field with a human body inside.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
"All the other handset vendors - including Apple - are essentially niche players," ABI Research noted.
For some background, I'm in IT and I work almost exclusively on Microsoft products and groan all you want but I'm a fan of theirs. I recently wanted to buy a smart phone. Mostly, something that was good at general web surfing, reading email and more. I saw my friends' iPhones and it was exactly what I was looking for but I have a natural anti-Apple bias so I didn't get one.
Then I started a search for a phone that met the requirements I have that didn't have an Apple on the back of it. Last Friday, I eliminated the final contender (AT&T Tilt) and gave up and bought an iPhone 3G.
It's not perfect, but it is amazingly good. I've yet to see a Windows Mobile device come close to it. The Samsung Omnia and Nokia Tube mentioned in the article don't appear to be available and to be honest, I didn't realize the other Windows Mobile devices sucked until I held them in my hand.
Does anyone know of a Windows Mobile device that matches the iPhone in web surfing? I'd love to hear about it.
I'm a big tall mofo.
This article fails to address anything meaningful. It has no facts, no helpful statistics, and no meaningful analysis. The real questions are:
1. What are the touch screen statistics in the United States? What share does Apple hold domestically?
2. Is there some reason why Apple is not competing in the international market? Is Apple having their lunch eaten by companies that are "household names" in Asia, or is the product inferrior? What is Apple's penetration in those markets over the past year?
3. How do these numbers change if were to include things like Black Berrys and other "smart" phone without touch screens?
4. Why are 80 percent of touch screen phones marketed in Asia? Why aren't the touch screens being created for the Asian market showing up here? I find it hard to believe that ease of displaying Asian fonts is the only reason. Is there some lack of American infrastructure? Lack of interest from American consumers?
As someone who loves bleeding edge technology, I'm frustrated by the lack of options in the US and find the whole international marketing strategy wonderfully interesting. But this article is a slow boat of fail because it lacks any analysis or insight.
My wife and I are excruciatingly unhappy owners of Samsung Glydes. The touch screens are nothing short of possessed.
* The screens randomly accept commands, often registering touches inches away from the actual contact
* The screens often refuse to acknowledge any contact whatsoever
* Worst of all, they're prone to poltergeist behaviors. While placed on a conference table in a meeting, for example, mine started self-executing commands. After much laughter, the assistant director of a government agency who happened to be in the room received a call from my phone (much to the delight of the attendees).
While that example was humorous, the phone has executed deletes of several important contacts, downloaded software, and refused to accept commands to answer important incoming phone calls.
Several trips to Verizon, including software updates and replacements, have failed to resolve the issues.
Perhaps Moto is a threat to Apple, but claiming that Samsung's touch screens are a threat is an absurd claim at best.
Larger than pencil points? Clearly you are not evolutionarily suited for the modern world.
Anybody can build a touch screen that lets you poke at big static buttons, or lets you try to fatfinger a virtual keyboard. Only Apple has the FingerWorks patents to do high-quality, high-usability multitouch gestures.
Disclaimer: I've been using a FingerWorks TouchStream keyboard for more than five years, so I'm a big fan of the technology. I've also been a Mac user since 1985 or so. But when Apple bought FingerWorks, they completely shut down all sales and support, leaving the existing user base swinging in the breeze, so I'm a bit... conflicted.
That would ROCK. They could just slap a touchscreen on top of the bottom clamshell of a Macbook air.
It would be perfect for college students taking notes and reading e-textbooks and a myriad of other applications.
Somewhat offtopic, and forgive me for being ignorant, by why havent tablets caught on? I'd buy one in a heartbeat if it Just Worked(tm). Most of the "tablets" out there are just laptops with flippable screens == too much complexity and too many fragile moving parts.
I usually can't stand Macs but if Apple were the first to do a simple, elegant, full-screened "iClipboard", I'd be all over it.
Forget the iPhone, it's UI is way too goddamned slow for a mobile device.
TFA says a big reason why it is lagging overall is because Moto and Samsung holds 80% of the touchscreen market in Asia. Considering that Apple has not even RELEASED the iPhone in CHINA, Korea and Vietnam to name a few countries it seems obvious why. Also, it was just released (like a month or two ago?) in places like INDIA, Singapre, etc.
On the contrary, seeing the crazy lengths people will go to here to GET an iPhone (I'm in Vietnam) I'm sure that that percentage will change. It is amazing to see, in a country where the per capita income is about $1K (CIA world factbook), lots of people carrying iPhones (a hacked iPhone is about $700 here). I was just in a cab and surprised to see the driver who probably makes less than $10/day using one (but maybe he "found" it from some unlucky person leaving it in the cab). The demand is so high that many telephone shops will have "iPhone" as the most prominent sign on their shops even though no-one in the entire country is an authorized reseller. Sorry but it is still a big big status symbol here.
Somewhat offtopic, and forgive me for being ignorant, by why havent tablets caught on? I'd buy one in a heartbeat if it Just Worked(tm).
Looks like you just answered your own question there...
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
There are "slates", which are only the screen and a stylus, but text input is very annoying. Think of the amount of text you might enter in a single day, or just even in a single slashdot post. Would you rather write it with a stylus or type it?
Jean-Francois Im's blog
Not even remotely comparable figures. iPhones aren't even being sold in places like CHINA, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, etc. They've only been selling in some other countries for a month or two (Singapore, India).
So if the iPhone has 20% of the OVERALL Asian market, it must be COMPLETELY DOMINATING the few (1?) market it's been in for any length of time: Japan.
Time to buy more Apple Stock.
They have caught on in niche markets. Last two times I went for surgery at a relatively brand new place all the nurses had tablets. Those 100 forms you had to fill out authorizing surgery were all digital. You could read through them and sign at the bottom.
All the XRay machines at their office are digital. Everything gets dumped into a central server. When I went into the consult rooms the doctors walked in with tablets and reviewed the xrays right there, no more having to hand off the big negatives.
Doctors wrote prescriptions on the pad and they printed off out front.
But as others have pointed out, I wouldn't have wanted to post this note on slashdot using a stylus.
"I think this post sums up the term "fanboi" nicely."
No, it really didn't... I don't know what "specs" we're talking about being missed here, but a good interface is crucial for many people...
like Myron Krueger said: "If people were going to use computers all day, everyday, the design of such machines was not solely a technical problem-- it was also an aesthetic one. A lousy interface would mean a lousy life."
Dude, this is Slashdot. Here, "advanced user interface" means you're using xterm-color.
#DeleteChrome
in Japanese, the word "Japanese" is "Ni-hon-go" 3 'characters' (but I believe there's rules when joining these characters together) vs the English "J-a-p-a-n-e-s-e". I'm not sure how many Japanese characters there are though, since they get joined together to define a word (1 character can be 2 syllables).
There are 1945 jouyou kanji, which are required to be known to achieve a normal level of litteracy.
Why we haven't already developed input (we may have, but a Japanese co-worker used an English keyboard and through key tricks typed in her native language that way) that uses the syllables from eastern languages is beyond me. The speed and efficiency would be nice, although we sort of already do type in words "WTF" "LOL" "BRB".
The way it works is that you type each of the sounds that represent the word(ni, ho, n and go in your example), then you convert these sounds to kanji. Sometimes the conversion requires no choice from the user, and sometimes it does(such as ki, which could mean tree, spirit, etc.)
I believe a similar system is used for Chinese.
Remember though that predictive analysis can be used, in the same way that predictive text analysis can be used to enter words on cellphones. For example, when using handwritten input, potential characters can be filtered based on the type of strokes that have been written so far, as there is a certain stroke order for characters. There is also a potential for predictive analysis, as multiple-character words are fixed combinations. For example, if I write hana(flower), perhaps the next character will be ya(shop, thus turning the word into florist) or bi(fire, thus turning the word into fireworks).
But the real question is... which eastern language is the best suited for word input?
Good question. :P
Jean-Francois Im's blog
Frankly, who gives a flip which was the first!
What I'm interested in, is which device does it best, and I think it's pretty damn obvious which the winner is.