chano

Motorola's Droid Comes in Peace - For Now

Carl is a marketeer. The advice to Apple, not to underestimate future revisions of Android phone is good advice. The paid for hype surrounding the Android launch cannot compare with the unpaid 180+/- days of unceasing blasts of coverage that Apple secured for the iPhone simply by pre-announcing it six months before release .... and then keeping silent till launch day. The tension, caused by the lack of further hard info, led to manic levels of discussion, speculation and press coverage. That is why there were, and remain, thousands who will queue for the iPhone. It is the mystery factor stupid. It's the 'I gotta have it' craze.
Of course, it helps that Apple has a superb pedigree and an unmatched reputation for quality, support and user-centricity.
btw
Welcome back Carl. You are the chief reason for my visiting SA.
Please do consider a regular personal blog. You will gather a following.

Five Reasons RIMM Will Continue to Fall

If you are talking about just the lowly folkphones or even the heady heights of schmartphonedom, I might agree with scenarios that allow a fair future for RIMM. It's a good phone. But it is just a phone after all by modern metrics or by market expectations.
I don't know what kind of ambitious vision the Googlers have for the gPhone. It could be much more than just a phone, but they have only a partial ecosystem at present with Cloud computing and Search. Just possibly they will have an Apps channel too, but it all depends on the quality of what they offer in their (as yet) non-existent store. Open may be fine in computing but risky in telephony, without quarantining measures in place.
Apple otoh has a broadening ecosystem, and a very rich business franchise that goes well beyond telephony alone. They have a super-sophisticated, feature-rich, rapidly evolving, ultimately stable and demonstrably scalable OS. They have total hardware/software optimisation. And ITMS. The best mobile web. A real and immediately successful Apps store. A whole family of independently successful products. The best software in areas where it competes etc etc. And who knows what else is to come? A mobile teleporter perhaps to hammer transportation and commuting costs and (finally) render the car obsolete? I am waiting. The next iPhone killer app perhaps.
But perhaps most importantly, it has two more truly winning attributes. Firstly, since 1997 Apple has a corporate vision to add to its legendary marketing imagination. Secondly, it is the only company that I know of in the fields of computing, mobile entertainment and telephony that thinks about its users wants and satisfactions as its first, middle and final priorities. Apple has learned from its many many cringe-making corporate stewardship and marketing mistakes, pre 1997.
As for its competitors, in telephony or in computing, ask yourself this question. What are the unintended consequences of a lack of vision and imagination and the absence of a user-centric focus in a savvy marketplace with high expectations? Mediocrity, declining results and likely failure, no? Complacency and a tendency to favour the same-old same-old approach to business offerings and to customers. In a word ... WYUTIWYG or what you're used to is what you get.
Whether or not it succeeds as well as it deserves to, Apple has given every player in its many markets a well-deserved rude shock of awakening. The music industry will never be the same exploitative biz it has always been, selling mostly crap tracks to powerless fans and groupies - each CD containing a little wheat and a hell of a lot of chaff. I'll admit there are very very few but notable exceptions to this. But this is down to the rare but talented performers who never put crap music out there. It is not due to music companies who will sell any cruddy (wheat and mostly chaff) mix to fools willing to pay for it.
Smell familiar? Reminiscent perhaps of many bad mortgages and a few good ones being pulped into a CDO mix and then touted as good stuff and sold to the dummies in the financial sector who think they know a good deal when they see one? he he. Really, r$ally schmarrrrttttt! CD ... CDO... Hmm.
In the telephony market, I think the Apple effect will serve to wrest market control from the grasping telcos and unimaginative (same old same old) phone makers and place it fully in the hands of the customer where it belongs. I mean if you're a customer, don't you want to call at least some of the shots? What are we? Willing doormats? I don't think so. Come on now you Applephobes, exactly what would be so bad a deal about getting great phones and fair mileage plans? Just wait and see. You'll love it.
Finally, it's the same, but even more so, with the computing marketplace - I mean who else makes a computer that runs its maker's proprietary OS (OSX) but also provides the very best hardware platform for its chief rival's OS (Windoze)? Name me just one other PC maker. Come on now all you Apple doubters and naysayers. Just one name is all I want. And just what is so bad a deal about getting a dual platform computer for the price of a dreary, low quality, arthritic one trick pony .... errr .... I mean donkey?
And if you can't find that name (he he), then do the brave but ssshcary thing, step up to the plate and ask the logical next question. If no one but Apple can offer this, a true USP after all, why would anyone buy anything but a Mac? Duh!! I mean what is the average IQ in America?
At it's leisure and with the usual perfect timing, all Apple has to do is to sell some new, slightly under-specified, Macs (let's call them Schmacks say) at prices that no PC maker can match, quality standard for quality standard of course ie wheat for chaff. And by 'under-specified' I mean by Mac standards. By PC standards, they just have to slightly better the very low specs of any PC format they choose to compete with. Where would be the objection from PC die-hards? I mean, Apple's Schmack offerings would easily (also) be the best of breed in each class of PC format they choose to challenge.
Also, what is the likelihood that, in the markets it operates in, an Apple product could ever be described as having succumbed to commoditisation?
Short Apple whydontcha? I am buying.
Apologies for the length of this post. I guess I'm just a Daniel Eran Dilger wannabe after all. Hmmm. Sob sob.