iPhone Tops Windows Mobile Share; MS Releases iPhone App

walterbyrd notes that new data from Gartner indicates that the successful launch of the iPhone 3G was enough to push iPhone market share over that of Windows Mobile devices — the entire range of them. And reader Spy Hunter writes: "Seadragon Mobile is Microsoft's first iPhone application. Seadragon is a technology for streaming zoomable user interfaces, and this iPhone incarnation allows viewing huge collections of gigapixel-sized images over WiFi or 3G. If you don't have an iPhone, you can also try Seadragon in your browser via Seadragon Ajax."

Comments

Innovation pays

[alain94040]

When Apple launched the iPhone two years ago, they announced that their goal was to ship 10 million iPhones by year end. Frankly, no one had any clue how many or how few would sell. It was just a guess on the part of Apple management (really!).

And somehow, they hit the number and blew past Microsoft smartphones, Nokia and blackberry. For once innovation pays, I love it. In he last 5 years I was involved as an engineer with some of the companies designing cell phones. Ground-breaking innovation is not in their DNA. Instead, they take last year's technology and make it 20% better and faster. Middle management has no clue how to foster innovation.

You need those companies around because they drive down cost and make technology accessible. But you also need a few Apples that forego incremental improvements and shoot for the moon.

--
French iPhone Apps review site applicationiphone.com looking for contributors

Re:Innovation pays

[Midnight Thunder]

Yup, it really is amazing. I don't think anyone could have guessed it would have done so well.

I wonder how much this says something about the iPhone and how much this says of the competition. Of the competition, the way I see them:
  - For me Windows mobile suffers from the fact it feel like a desktop OS shoe horned into a mobile device.
  - Palm lost focus and the separation of hardware into two separate companies that caused more problems than it solved. Then there was the fact they decided to go with Windows mobile.
  - RIM is still the better contender, but maybe purely focusing on a business solution limits the potential size of the market.
  - Android suffers from the fact they don't control the hardware, so the quality of the experience depends as much on the device manufacturers as the work Google does.

Re:Innovation pays

[Cyberax]

Android has good chances, but it has arrived a bit late. For most practical purposes it STILL has not arrived (G1 device is too 'niche').

Re:Innovation pays

[dogmatixpsych]

There are two types of creativity (innovation) - thinking up things no one has done before and taking what a bunch of people have done before and putting it all together. Apple does some of the first but mostly does the second type. They not only put it all together, they do so in an attractive package that usually works well.

Re:Innovation pays

[LibertineR]

Well, I am no Apple Fan-boy, but I'll say this about the iPhone.

I have never come across a device that allows me to use it how I LIVE, more than the iPhone does. Most every device forces you to adapt to how it works, make changes to how you like to do things in order to get productive use out of the device. The iPhone just seems to fit like a glove to how I like to do things with a smartphone.

I dont have to compromise, I just use it, it works, especially the GPS feature.

Re:Innovation pays

[konohitowa]

I've had numerous cell phones over the past 15 years from a variety of manufacturers, as well as a few PDAs. The iPhone is the first of them that I really use regularly for a variety of tasks. The interface is relatively easy to use, the applications perform well, and updates and syncing are straightforward. This isn't about any individual component in the mix, it's the overall integration.

As to the innovation, Apple is the first company to tell the US wireless carriers that the cellphone vendor is defining platform. In the past, you never really knew what features you were going to get and what features would be removed so that the wireless carrier could charge you to use the feature. I can't imagine that Verizon would have agreed to network changes in order to support visual voicemail without having it disabled by default and then charging on a per message basis (or some other equally obnoxious plan). In fact, Verzion probably would have required that all of the interface buttons be reordered or some other silliness like they seem to do with so many of the Motorola phones they carry. Apple also worked to ensure that the data plan was unlimited so that you would be encouraged to use the device without fear of bandwidth charges.

Certainly there are improvements to be made - it's not as if it's perfect by any means - but at least I know that I can get upgrades as they come out, rather than getting a device that gets little or no improvement over the course of my 2 year contract. Or one that requires me to go track down a kiosk and hope for the best.

Re:Innovation pays

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Yup, it really is amazing. I don't think anyone could have guessed it would have done so well.

Some of use knew right from the moment we saw the demo that it would become incredibly popular. Of course, many of us also get ignored when we start ranting about how important usability is and how there is more to design than aesthetics.

Re:Innovation pays

[ssstraub]

The interface of the Treo is borderline terrible. Familiarity != intuitive. If you can hand your Treo to your 65 year old grandmother and she can figure it out without you walking her through each step, I'll eat my hat.

The fact that I never have to use a stylus or navigate an extremely poorly thought out menu bar at the top of the screen makes an iPhone so much less aggravating as a portable device.

I've used a Treo, and I'd rather keep my old Motorola V300 than use one of those daily.

Re:Innovation pays

[absoluteflatness]

According to a recent article, you may be suffering from dementia.

Re:Innovation pays

[initialE]

Well the iPhone didn't stand a chance against Windows Mobile, because there were apps and apps for WM. There were apps for every kind of conceivable thing you could put on a mobile device. It was like... windows... You know you don't want it, you just don't have a choice because you needed your apps supported. Never mind it crashes all the time. Never mind you might miss important calls and never know it. It had app support.
Then what happened? Apple releases an SDK that enables rapid app development. They produce a storefront that enables you to hang out your hat almost immediately. They even provide back-end infrastructure for apps that need to do background communication. Once again, they are a major contender. And in record time.
My question is this: Do you see this happening for Android?

Re:Innovation pays

[jcr]

Apple has shown the world that customers do care about quality

One lesson I take from Apple, Snap-on, Vice Grip and Virgin, (just to name a few that spring to mind), is that no matter how crowded a market is, you can still compete with higher quality instead of lower pricing.

-jcr

Re:Innovation pays

[HonkyLips]

I always felt like most of the hype around the iPhone's launch missed the point. The hype was deserved, but everyone was hyping the wrong part.
What I saw was Apple not launching a cell-phone, they were launching a new mobile computing platform that could also be used as a cell-phone. It's a fundamental paradigm shift. Even now when I read rumours of Apple launching a netbook I think to myself that they've already done it- the iPhone. Back then journalists scoffed at the price and laughed at suggestions that Apple might worry giants like Nokia but they simply didn't get it. The iPhone isn't simply a phone, it's the first of the next-generation in mobile computing.
Comparing Apple's market share to Nokia's or other established phone manufacturers misses the point, because they are simply making phones. Even RIM just makes phones - call them smart phones if you prefer, but the basic way in which RIM have approached the Blackberry is the same as the way Nokia approaches the design of their phones. They do different things in different ways, but they are, first and foremost, phones. The parent poster is spot on when he refers to a new phone simply being the old phone but 20% faster etc etc etc. It's like car manufacturing, where many of today's cars are just the result of decades of incremental improvements on an old and outdated design.
In some ways the iPhone is a technical trojan horse but with a sophistication beyond Sony using the PS3 to get BluRay players into living rooms. The iPhone is getting real mobile computers into people's hands, with the 'real' internet (ignoring the Flash issue), and a real operating system. If people think it's just a phone that can play games, or a combination of a phone and an iPod then fine- Apple have done their job. They've made a mobile computer that is so easy to use people take it for granted...
I always thought that the iPhone deserved every bit of hype it received when it was launched, but not for the glossy interface or slick design. It was taking on industry giants such as Nokia and instantly making their corporate model obsolete, and offering instead a new paradigm in regards to mobile personal computers.

congratulations

[larry bagina]

You can complain about cut and paste or how the iphone is locked down or too expensive or doesn't run linux, but it's been a real donkey punch to the industry, and even rival companies acknowledge (and applaud) it for raising the bar (at least in the US).

Re:congratulations

[Anthony_Cargile]

Well they ported some portions of Linux(sorry fanboys) to the iPhone, apparently enough to at least boot it and use it without sound, touch, wireless or any other major iPhone pluses.

And as far as it being a 'real donkey punch' to the industry, MS actually writing an app for it pretty much confirms this, although they have also written ads in Flash despite marketing Silverlight :p.

Re:congratulations

[roc97007]

> You can complain about cut and paste or how the iphone is locked down or too expensive or doesn't run linux, but it's been a real donkey punch to the industry, and even rival companies acknowledge (and applaud) it for raising the bar (at least in the US).

Yes, I can, (except, who cares if it runs linux?) and also complain about 3G/Edge issues, dropped calls, and lack of MMS and flash and java. But despite all that it demonstrably kicks Windows Mobile's butt. (In fairness, from a technical standpoint, it was an easy butt to kick.)

The biggest lesson the industry needs to take from this is: People use Windows Mobile devices because they have to. People use i-Phones because they want to.

Microsoft promotes the "have to" mentality by selling interoperability and similar look-and-feel with Winders and Winders-related services. As more and more people (and corporations) realize that the Start button is not a good paradigm for a phone, and sufficient interoperability can be achieved without having to put up with the Windows Mobile code base, Windows Mobile will diminish to an also-ran and, like Disco, we'll all look back and wonder what madness made us think we liked it.

However, these other issues still need to be fixed. Here's hoping that Apple isn't so arrogant to believe that they can innovate *once* and retain the market. Nokia and RIM now have offerings that are similar in concept, without the drawbacks. Apple set the bar -- now they need to show us how to rise above it. Merely increasing the memory in the next model will not be good enough.

Personally, I'm still clinging to my old beat-up Palm-based phone whilst I see how Apple fixes the problems enumerated here in the next release. Or if someone catches up to them in the meantime.

For example, my daughter is a rabid user of MMS with her Blackberry Curve. On an i-phone, I'd not be able to receive her messages. That is not acceptable. Having a cool interface is not an acceptable substitute. Apple, give us the features we really want, instead of the features you think we should be using, and there will be no stopping you.

Re:congratulations

[AmberBlackCat]

...apparently enough to at least boot it and use it without sound, touch, wireless or any other major iPhone pluses.

That sounds like Fedora 10 on my laptop right now...

Hmm...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Remember, remember.

Now, the iPhone isn't my cup of tea at all; but I believe the term is "p0wn3d."

Re:Hmm...

[IorDMUX]

Now, the iPhone isn't my cup of tea at all; but I believe the term is "ph0wn3d."

FTFY

Old, dying turgid software ...

[hattig]

Is it surprising?

WinCE was originally developed as a PalmOS competitor/beater, running on fat Psion 5 look-a-likes with dire keyboards, snail-like interfaces and the stability of Mount Etna.

Since that time the platform has remained the same. The browser is still ancient, and their best promises for the next version are "IE 6" quality, i.e., irrelevant. Sure, there are new interfaces, the software is a little more up to date, the kernel has been switched to a more modern variant, it does wireless, bluetooth, 3G, etc, but it's still the same at heart. Rubbish.

Microsoft - you could sell iPhone Office for $99 and make a mint. Or you could sell licenses to WinMob+Pocket Office to manufacturers for cents. Microsoft have always said they'll develop where the market is. If the iPhone and iPod Touch ecosystem continues to grow, surely it is but a matter of time before they develop iPhone viewers, and then editors, for their file formats - before the formats become irrelevant... Pocket Project for iPhone would result in many a fevered brow in managers' offices around the world.

since they are the market leader

[mevets]

can we expect an onslaught of viruses? It is much easier to attack a single platform, if I understand the virus marketing info properly.

iPhone achilles' heel

[caywen]

I think the iPhone has one major achilles' heel which is Apple's ludicrous approval process. Developer frustration is beginning to boil over as many go weeks and months without so much as a peep as to where their hard work stands. And then after waiting for so long, they get notified that there's a misspelling, or that Apple doesn't like your icon. If they continue to alienate developers like this, and if Google, RIM, Nokia, and Microsoft provide a far more open experience, I think you'll start to see this juggernaut start to slow down. Other factors include just how much stupid stuff an AppStore user has to wade through to get to the good apps, and the extreme fragility of the Xcode code signing / deployment system is (sudden 0xE8000001 errors with the SDK 2.2 update, anyone?) iPhone is a good platform to develop for, but Apple's inability to get its SDK tools solid and its completely confusing, inconsistent, and nebulous approval system are just plain painful.

Re:tops?

[Kickersny.com]

So the title is misleading and/or confusing.

Welcome! You must be new here!

The interface matters

[sjbe]

There is no office software, there is no remote desktop, there is a pretty interface though.

If you think the iphone interface is just pretty you haven't really used it despite claims to the contrary. While the iphone is hardly perfect it is a HELL of a lot more usable for most folks than any Windows mobile, Palm or Nokia phone I've ever held - and I've used a LOT of them. Seriously - a LOT.

As for remote desktop you are wrong, they do exist.

Regarding office software, I'm quite sure it will come for whatever it's worth. I've never seen anyone actually do anything genuinely useful to a word, excel or powerpoint file on a PDA or smartphone - and I'm pretty geeky about this stuff. It's a nice checkbox feature that never actually gets used. I had the ability on my last PDA and I never once used it. I can't even think of a situation where I would use it. Maybe you actually do but that would make you very unusual.

That is nice, but it's a very long way away from matching the feature set of my 6 year old phone.

My Nokia E70 has roughly the same feature set as my wife's iPhone. But you know what? Only on paper are they comparable. Other than the physical keyboard the interface on the iPhone is vastly superior - and the virtual keyboard works well enough. Yes I can often get the same stuff done but it's way more of a pain in the ass on the Nokia. Same with the Treos I've used in the past - some Windows mobile, some PalmOS. There is more to a mobile device than just a feature set - it has to actually be usable.

So what makes the Iphone so awesome? Nothing.

There are millions of folks who actually use one that would probably disagree with you, myself included. I've heavily used numerous smartphone and PDA devices from RIM, Nokia, Palm, and a bunch based on Windows mobile. For most (not all - most) people I'm not aware of a device I could honestly recommend as better than an iPhone. If you have particular needs, yes there are other good devices that might suit you better. But the iPhone isn't selling so well because it is mediocre - it actually works pretty darn well. I can't say the same for a lot of other "smart" phone devices.

What makes it popular is the apple mystic and excellent marketing, but there is a reason serious business users shy away from it.

No, the reason business users don't use it is because Apple hasn't created the back end security and administration features corporate IT departments REQUIRE and RIM currently provides. Apple has recognized this and made some moves in that direction but it will take time to develop. It has nothing to do with any inherent superiority of blackberries as devices. I've used plenty of them and they are fine but corporate types don't use them because of the device itself - they use them because of the infrastructure.

Re:The interface matters

[kklein]

Thanks. I get so tired of the grumpy "featurism" of Slashdot posters. My old phone did everything and more than what my current iPhone does... on paper. In truth, I never got the music player to work anywhere near as well as my iPod, the display of Office documents was illegible, I couldn't find contacts worth a damn, every time I installed a program, it didn't work, and even though it had a 2 megapixel camera with optical zoom, the pictures from my iPhone look as good or better.

You can't judge a product by reading a feature table. You have to try to actually use it. What Apple did is what they always do: Take a product that someone already thought of, and made it actually do what the original people promised.

Re:The interface matters

[AaronLawrence]

The one most obvious and simple example of where Apple gets it, and NO OTHER MANUFACTURER does, is the clock.

On Apple's iPhone screen is a big, nicely rendered, white, TEXT clock telling you the time.

Without exception, ll the other developers are completely blinded by marketing or geekery and think that the clock must look cool, so they damage it's function almost to uselessness. They have some wanky simulated LED, LCD or analog clock, with shiny gradients and 3D edges, some of them moronically without numbers, or in tiny fonts. My own cheap Nokia 6234 got a shiny looking analog clock with no numbers, not even any hour marks!

Yet, when the backlight goes off and you want to quickly read the on-screen clock at an angle, the Apple one is 10x as easy to read. The others' gradients just reduce contrast, the 3D look makes them incomprehensible, the fake real-world look makes the numbers harder or non-existent.

And many people don't wear a watch anymore, using a phone instead, so this happens A LOT. The most commonly used function EVERY DAY, and everyone but apple gets it wrong. This tells you how out of touch phone developers generally are.

Re:Simple?

[Free the Cowards]

More phones every 3 days than iPhones in existence? Really?

Let's actually inject some numbers into the discussion, shall we?

As of October 21, 2008, there were 13 million iPhones sold. Let's be as charitable as possible toward your position and assume that not a single iPhone has been sold since then.

You state more Nokia phones sold in 3 days than 13 million. That works out to at least 1.58 billion Nokia phones sold per year.

According to Wikipedia, Nokia's sales in 2007 were about 440 million. So they would have had to increase by over a factor of 3 in 2008 for your numbers to be correct.

Furthermore, Wikipedia claims that this 440 million was 40% of global phone sales in 2007, meaning that global phone sales in 2007 were around 1.1 billion. So for your claim to be correct, Nokia would have had to sell about 50% more phones just from Nokia in 2008 than everybody in the entire industry combined sold in 2007.

Is that really the case?

Now, let's take that 1.1 billion figure, assume it's gone up a bit, and call it 1.5 billion phones sold per year at present. Three orders of magnitude give you 15 million smartphones sold per year in the entire world. That barely accounts for the iPhone, let alone Blackberry, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm....

So again, three orders of magnitude? Don't think so.

Re:What Gartner really said

[mgblst]

Oh, don't get all technical on us now, trying to use the proper meaning of words to deflate our high is the worst form of haberdashery!