Smart Phone Race

Selkies

The iPhone was obviously a game changer. The demand for smart phones is growing at a rapid rate, but will the iPhone continue to hold it's position as the pinnacle of mobile computing at the end of the year?

Having looked at the channel 9 videos on Windows Mobile 7 I have to say it looks like it's going to be a tough battle.

What do you think of the business models of all the major smart phone OS producers?

BopNiblets

iPhone smart? Pinnacle of mobile computing?

Son, what you been drinkin', does any company give iPhones to ther employees for business?

CR 7

Iphone : Smart Phones
as,
Prius : Supercars

jester77

I don't like the new windows layout, it's all over the place, too much scrolling left/right up/down. The iphone is nice but it is falling behind, will be interesting to see what they release in Summer. I really like the palm os software but their hardware is rubbish. Android is very promising, it will be interesting to see where it is in 12 months, a bit fragmented now and their iphone equivalent apps are not on par.

My fave os right now is the iphone os, I currently have an android phone and I will be changing in Summer, but don't know what yet. The smart phone race is still very young but it is moving fast, I think by Summer '11 we will have a better picture of how things look. Having just a nice OS (Palm) or nice hardware is not enough, the right balance of each needs to be there.

Selkies

BopNiblets wrote: »

iPhone smart? Pinnacle of mobile computing?

Son, what you been drinkin', does any company give iPhones to ther employees for business?

Yes there are companies that give their employees iPhones and use the enterprise license to make apps for their employees.

Selkies

Park Ji Sung wrote: »

Iphone : Smart Phones
as,
Prius : Supercars

What makes an iphone not a smart phone?

Selkies

jester77 wrote: »

I don't like the new windows layout, it's all over the place, too much scrolling left/right up/down.

Yeah that does seem a little odd. It's hard to judge though without holding one in your hand.

The windows apps look amazing though.

jester77 wrote: »

The iphone is nice but it is falling behind, will be interesting to see what they release in Summer.

I don't see how they have fallen behind. It seems more like everyone is following in their wake. Perhaps you can expand on that.

Oafley Jones

The above graph is a good example of why Apple is so worried by Goggle's OS. As good as the iPhone is I can't see how Apple can maintain it's marketshare with the increasing surge of the Android platform. For me it's a number game, Apple while producing one (or possibly two in the future) phones a year won't be able to hold off the rapid advance of so many other competitors.

Selkies

Oafley Jones wrote: »

The above graph is a good example of why Apple is so worried by Goggle's OS. As good as the iPhone is I can't see how Apple can maintain it's marketshare with the increasing surge of the Android platform. For me it's a number game, Apple while producing one (or possibly two in the future) phones a year won't be able to hold off the rapid advance of so many other competitors.

Yes however the iPhone has still got a leap ahead in terms of the app store. Some of it's other problems will be easier for apple to fix than for Google to bring the Android app store up to the iPhone level.

Also worth considering is that Gartner have changed their recommendation as regards Enterprise use of the iPhone : http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=626608

An advantage windows mobile 7 has is that the same development environment and languages that millions of .net developers already use can be used to build applications for Windows Mobile 7.

Microsoft are also giving away free copies of the tools to build apps (Visual Studio Express etc) which should help to compete with Android. Although I haven't heard what distribution will cost.

jester77

Selkies wrote: »

Yeah that does seem a little odd. It's hard to judge though without holding one in your hand.

The windows apps look amazing though.

True, the experience might be excellent when in the hand, I'm not liking the look of it so far but it is getting great reviews from people who have had hands on experience.

The apps do look amazing. They have a lot of catching up to do but they are well capable of pulling it off and I think the xbox live integration could be what saves them (although Apples game server announcement could make for serious competition). But I find their marketing campaign to the 30-something age group a little strange and I'm not sure how the previous windows power users will react to it, MS seem to be taking an Apple type control and putting a lot of restrictions in place which may not go down well with these users. I can see these people moving to Android.

Selkies wrote: »

I don't see how they have fallen behind. It seems more like everyone is following in their wake. Perhaps you can expand on that.

Yeah, badly phrased by me. Apple set the bar but others like Android and Palm have risen to this challenge and passed them out. Android is moving very fast, almost too fast, causing too much fragmentation between providers with different releases on different handsets, this puts people off buying handsets, but Google have said they plan to tackle this in future releases. Apples preview this week didn't offer anything amazing in comparison to what the other platforms currently do. But Apple haven't given us the full picture yet as they don't want to kill ipad sales. Once the new iphone hardware is announced then we will see what v4 can really do.

It's going to be an interesting remainder of the year for the different OS's. Unfortunately I don't see Palm surviving if they don't work with other hardware manufacturers.

Selkies

Oafley Jones wrote: »

The problem with such a graph is that it doesn't give you an accurate picture of mobile phone sales. I did a quick check and found this piechart for mobile market share stats for this year.

Selkies

http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/devices/symbian/

Silverlight for Symbian is in Beta, that's the same platform used to build apps for Windows Mobile 7.

Oafley Jones

Selkies wrote: »

Yes however the iPhone has still got a leap ahead in terms of the app store. Some of it's other problems will be easier for apple to fix than for Google to bring the Android app store up to the iPhone level.

Also worth considering is that Gartner have changed their recommendation as regards Enterprise use of the iPhone : http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=626608

An advantage windows mobile 7 has is that the same development environment and languages that millions of .net developers already use can be used to build applications for Windows Mobile 7.

Microsoft are also giving away free copies of the tools to build apps (Visual Studio Express etc) which should help to compete with Android. Although I haven't heard what distribution will cost.

I'm not sure Apple have much of an advantage with their App store over Google. There were over 9,500 new apps registered for Android last month alone. Google do have some catching up terms of availability but that's an easy fix. Fragmentation of the platform is in my view Androids single biggest potential drawback, although Google have said they're addressing this with Froyo.

There are reports that Google are involved with revenue sharing with manufacturer and carriers that manufacture/offer Android handsets, if true it's a brilliant move.

Also, in many ways Apple is Apple's biggest enemy, the current corporate culture isn't winning them many friends and with their antics they're pushing developers onto other platforms.

BopNiblets

Yeah Android has massive potential just because of the amount of handsets it can saturate the market with, and that market can only get bigger.
A quick search on gsmarena.com for Android enabled phones (including the older versions though): 57!
Apple can only really have one phone at a time, and the Android is open source so manufacturers can vary it if they want.

Selkies

Oafley Jones wrote: »

I'm not sure Apple have much of an advantage with their App store over Google. There were over 9,500 new apps registered for Android last month alone. Google do have some catching up terms of availability but that's an easy fix. Fragmentation of the platform is in my view Androids single biggest potential drawback, although Google have said they're addressing this with Froyo.

There are reports that Google are involved with revenue sharing with manufacturer and carriers that manufacture/offer Android handsets, if true it's a brilliant move.

Also, in many ways Apple is Apple's biggest enemy, the current corporate culture isn't winning them many friends and with their antics they're pushing developers onto other platforms.

30,000 apps as of March 16th for the Android store: http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/03/16/google-android-market-now-serving-30000-apps/

I assume that will be 39,500 given your current figure.

185,000 apps as of April 8th for the apple store http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_Store

In the last month there has been 35,000 apps created for the iPhone app store.

What that means for the end user is that a utility they expect from their smart phone is more likely to be on the iPhone due to the current amount of apps and at the moment with the current rate of app release the iPhone is going to stay well ahead of the android.

Selkies

BopNiblets wrote: »

Yeah Android has massive potential just because of the amount of handsets it can saturate the market with, and that market can only get bigger.
A quick search on gsmarena.com for Android enabled phones (including the older versions though): 57!
Apple can only really have one phone at a time, and the Android is open source so manufacturers can vary it if they want.

The multiple handsets are a definite advantage so long as the standard of hardware is maintained.

The problem with altering the manufacturer altering the OS for different handsets is that Google won't be able to guarantee the stability of their OS which is bad the android brand name.

jester77

Rumours that Palm is up for sale this week. They really need a strong proven hardware manufacturer to take them over.

This could be interesting depending on who takes them over. HTC are supposed to be interested along with Lenovo. Wonder what this would mean for Android if HTC take over Palm and if they will continue to support Android. When you take away HTC hardware from Android, there isn't a lot there to tempt you to the platform.

justsomebloke

Selkies wrote: »

http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/devices/symbian/

Silverlight for Symbian is in Beta, that's the same platform used to build apps for Windows Mobile 7.

Is symbian not a dead duck in the smartphone market though? Nokia have already said their top end phones won't be using symbian and that they will only be using it on their mid range and low end phones?

I do think however that android is going the way that symbian was. Yes it won't be the coolest OS on the market but it will be on the vast majority of handsets and cause of this there will be a "App for that" soon enough on android.

There main problem for android is that the main people pushing them have been HTC, however outside "geeks" HTC isn't a well known brand so few people have been jumping on the bandwagon but now with people like Sony Ericison jumping on the bandwagon as well as Google them selves android will eventually start hitting a more main stream market and at that point it will be interesting to see how it develops.

Selkies

Joe the Santa wrote: »

Is symbian not a dead duck in the smartphone market though? Nokia have already said their top end phones won't be using symbian and that they will only be using it on their mid range and low end phones?

What are they going to be running on their high end phones?

Joe the Santa wrote: »

I do think however that android is going the way that symbian was. Yes it won't be the coolest OS on the market but it will be on the vast majority of handsets and cause of this there will be a "App for that" soon enough on android.

There main problem for android is that the main people pushing them have been HTC, however outside "geeks" HTC isn't a well known brand so few people have been jumping on the bandwagon but now with people like Sony Ericison jumping on the bandwagon as well as Google them selves android will eventually start hitting a more main stream market and at that point it will be interesting to see how it develops.

What may contribute to that problem is that for Google it's it's difficult to market Android to the end user. With the iPhone you can show the handset and say this is what you get when you buy our product.

justsomebloke

Selkies wrote: »

What are they going to be running on their high end phones?

truthfully have no idea. It should have been the same OS as the N900 however they have since taken over another company that was making a different version of a Linux OS so going forward they should be mixing Maemo with that. However even before the merger they announced that they would only be releasing one new phone in 2010 with Maemo.

Selkies wrote: »

What may contribute to that problem is that for Google it's it's difficult to market Android to the end user. With the iPhone you can show the handset and say this is what you get when you buy our product.

This is the problem and windows 7 mobile will have the same problem as it isn't a central brand reaching out to customers but with so many vendors backing them they will still shift more phones then apple (well android will, 7 won't as we all know:D)

Selkies

Joe the Santa wrote: »

This is the problem and windows 7 mobile will have the same problem as it isn't a central brand reaching out to customers but with so many vendors backing them they will still shift more phones then apple (well android will, 7 won't as we all know:D)

I wouldn't underestimate windows mobile 7. The massive developer base + a high quality product + a gigantic budget + xbox live tie make it a highly competitive offering.

Cyrus

ive tried them all really, and for an end user experience the iphone is still unsurpassed for most people, android has come close, my hero was the 2nd best phone ive had, but my 3gs is the best and i reckon 4.0 will put it up to google again,

not fussed who wins either way, ill goto the latest and greatest whoever that may be

Atomic Pineapple

Cyrus wrote: »

ive tried them all really, and for an end user experience the iphone is still unsurpassed for most people, android has come close, my hero was the 2nd best phone ive had, but my 3gs is the best and i reckon 4.0 will put it up to google again,

not fussed who wins either way, ill goto the latest and greatest whoever that may be

4.0 has nothing exciting in it at all, in fact it showed up how far behind Apple are.

I agree the iphone is still the best end user device at the minute but it wont be for long, Android is getting stable and getting flashy now and the real top devices are starting to emerge, the Nexus One is not far off the iphone at all and the EVO looks amazing

With developers turning to Android for its more open approach and Apple showing no sign of giving up there controlling ways its only a matter of time before paid apps on Android start to outshine apps on the iphone

gu10

Oafley Jones wrote: »

The above graph is a good example of why Apple is so worried by Goggle's OS. As good as the iPhone is I can't see how Apple can maintain it's marketshare with the increasing surge of the Android platform. For me it's a number game, Apple while producing one (or possibly two in the future) phones a year won't be able to hold off the rapid advance of so many other competitors.

The only reason why the graph is like that is because android is so reliant on outside HTTP based services ('cloud'-based) and therefore soaks up bandwidth like a mother****er

nmesisca

gu10 wrote: »

The only reason why the graph is like that is because android is so reliant on outside HTTP based services ('cloud'-based) and therefore soaks up bandwidth like a mother****er

?? the chart has nothing to do with bandwith.

bigjohnny80

Why does noone talk about RIM (blackberry). The are the largest selling smartphone maker in the world after all??

partyatmygaff

bigjohnny80 wrote: »

Why does noone talk about RIM (blackberry). The are the largest selling smartphone maker in the world after all??

No they're not, it's actually 1. Nokia 2. RIM 3. Apple 4. Motorola (IIRC) and I have no idea what company is no. 5

Selkies

bigjohnny80 wrote: »

Why does noone talk about RIM (blackberry). The are the largest selling smartphone maker in the world after all??

Nokia are the largest, and no one is expecting that to last very long unless Nokia start using an OS made by Google or Microsoft.

nmesisca wrote: »

?? the chart has nothing to do with bandwith.

If you look at the top it says Mobile Traffic Share.
While it's not clear how it weights texts and calls against http or even if text and calls are included, it doesn't give the full picture as to market share which is the point he was making.

partyatmygaff

Selkies wrote: »

Nokia are the largest, and no one is expecting that to last very long unless Nokia start using an OS made by Google or Microsoft.

Maemo beats both Android, W7P and definitley beats Symbian.

funkyjebus

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Maemo beats both Android, W7P and definitley beats Symbian.

agreed. Maemo is a beast. can't believe no one mentioned before you. my n900 is the best phone ive ever had by a mile (except for battery life!!!!)

youcancallmeal

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Maemo beats both Android, W7P and definitley beats Symbian.

Going forward it will be known as the rather ridiculous sounding MeeGo

partyatmygaff

youcancallme>al wrote: »

Going forward it will be known as the rather ridiculous sounding MeeGo

Not as ridiculous as saying "Going forward"... I hate that phrase

Selkies

funkyjebus wrote: »

agreed. Maemo is a beast. can't believe no one mentioned before you. my n900 is the best phone ive ever had by a mile (except for battery life!!!!)

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Maemo beats both Android, W7P and definitley beats Symbian.

What makes it better?

nmesisca

funkyjebus wrote: »

agreed. Maemo is a beast. can't believe no one mentioned before you. my n900 is the best phone ive ever had by a mile (except for battery life!!!!)

is too much of a beast really.. and too big.. plus with intel being in the middle now, i wouldn't be surprised if it wasnt given the attention it needs to flourish.
intel has the attention span of a nat when it comes to products that dont bring in enough revenue from the get go.

partyatmygaff

Selkies wrote: »

What makes it better?

It runs on a real full linux kernel just like any desktop meaning it's completely open and that it's extremely powerful as an OS. Android is only very loosely based on linux and even at that it's apps are all java based whilst Maemo can run anything that Debian ARM can run.

Here is the N900 playing a linux port of Quake 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSgjjt2TCqM

Here it is running Debian linux with apps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6zNfBczub8

youcancallmeal

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Not as ridiculous as saying "Going forward"... I hate that phrase

Well there may be a bit of a paradigm shift vis-à-vis the synergy of Intel and Nokia working together :cool:

nmesisca

partyatmygaff wrote: »

It runs on a real full linux kernel just like any desktop meaning it's completely open and that it's extremely powerful as an OS. Android is only very loosely based on linux and even at that it's apps are all java based whilst Maemo can run anything that Debian ARM can run.

Here is the N900 playing a linux port of Quake 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSgjjt2TCqM

Here it is running Debian linux with apps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6zNfBczub8

still.. at least for me.. its too much of a pc and not enough of a phone..

Selkies

partyatmygaff wrote: »

It runs on a real full linux kernel just like any desktop meaning it's completely open and that it's extremely powerful as an OS. Android is only very loosely based on linux and even at that it's apps are all java based whilst Maemo can run anything that Debian ARM can run.

Here is the N900 playing a linux port of Quake 3



Here it is running Debian linux with apps

That is certainly impressive, however I'm not sure that it makes it better than the Android, just different.

The android has a market place where businesses can make money from writing software for that smart phone.

How does the maemo compare on that front?

As for WP7, it runs .Net XNA which makes it far better for games than any of the competitors.

I think the maemo is better for linux enthusiasts rather than simply better in general, but I might be wrong.