theandroidblog

Nice chart from ChangeWave showing Apple challenging Rim market share. Been negative on Rimm for a while and I think the share losses will continue–not just from Apple but most especially Android.

Forget the current chart though, what will the chart look like 4 years from now?

I think the lines may look somewhat similar, with Apple up as the top blue line, and Google’s Android as the challenger. Here are a couple of reasons why with a final prediction at the end:

* Apple’s software platform and OS are too closed. It’s a bit to capricious and is rather blatant about keeping competitive apps off the IPhone. This pattern is very similar to the OS wars between Apple and Microsoft. In the end, the crappier software won the day because their platform was open.
* Google is a bit different than Microsoft in the sense that they are not horrible coders. In fact, they are quite good at software which is the most important piece of the handset puzzle. Google also has a huge base of web users that can be leveraged into the mobile handset world. And again, unlike Microsoft Google does not make bad software.
* Apple’s strategy gets it higher margins in the short term, but what happens in the long term as Android starts to challenge it’s growth? The same thing that occurred in the war for the desktop can happen again in the war for the handset.
* Android is really quite good. The platform has a lot of potential.
* My last call was that Apple would trounce Blackberry and Nokia would continue to lose share. I think that trend will continue. My next call–3-4 years out is that Android will eventually cap Apple’s market share growth and eventually win this war–or at least most of the major battles. I think Apple risks the same outcome as before–snatching defeat from the jaws of victory if it doesn’t loosen its grip on its platform.

To appease the disclosure gods. Minor position in Apple Calls (most was sold after earnings), and Long Google Leaps.

I hear the comparison between

I hear the comparison between the OS wars in the 90’s and the mobile OS wars today, however, I feel that the ‘winner-loser’ dichotomy is misplaced because Apple is even now commanding higher margins for their computer hardware.

The difference are also much greater than many writers admit for the sake of the convenience that the comparison offers.

When Microsoft took over the personal computing realm they rode on the back of IBM which was well entrenched in corporate culture. Google does not have that luxury. Google also does not have the power to bully their OEMs like Microsoft had and the mobile space is much more vulnerable to platform fragmentation then the PC platform was. The trouble with history is that, when we look to learn from it, the worst mistake can be to assume a superficial analysis will be all it takes.

While it is reasonable to think that Google will catch up with Apple in a few years in respect of marketshare, the mindset of ‘high market share = winner, lower market share = loser’ keeps many people from getting the real picture.

Even if there were more Android devices on the market, they would be fragmented with no universal user-experience, application range or support.

Apple has been most influential in the tech industry despite their minute market share in desktop or even laptop computing. It is vastly influential in the mobile space despite still only having a tiny share of the market. And more importantly, Apple is making vastly more profit out of every device sold.

How much money are the competitors making?

Google is far from making any money out of Android. The Android OEMs are not making anywhere near the money out of their handsets, many are in decline or just recovering.

So Apple has a far better position than it ever had before. And as I said, it wasn’t doing badly before anyway.

If the list of features added to the forthcoming Android 2.0 operating system (code-named Eclair) leaves you drooling, there is a way to get a taste of one of the goodies coming in Google’s Eclair release.

No, we’re not sending you a Motorola Droid (live review).

Rather, Asurion’s free AddressBook beta, newly released in the Android Market, is a socially connected alternative to Android’s native address book. It shares a similar focus with Android 2.0’s Quick Contact concept, and with other social address books, namely, that of being able to quickly communicate with a person in multiple ways from your contact list.

While Android 2.0 will offer a pop-up ticker that lets you e-mail, text, or call, AddressBook, which was announced at Demo 2009 (story), can also get you socializing with friends via Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and others. AddressBook doesn’t include a widget at this point, but it does get you inside social networks.

You pair a friend with their social networking account by setting up plug-ins, or MixIns, as Asurion calls them. Setup takes some patience. You’ll first select the social networks you want to incorporate through the Market screen. After downloading each separate MixIn as its own Android APK file, you’ll need to install it, then log in. If you ask AddressBook to automatically match contacts with social-network accounts, it’ll take a few minutes longer. In this case, the wait is worth it, especially if you have a sizable Gmail contact list to begin with.

The Facebook plug-in can also fill in your address book with Facebook profile pictures. Facebook integration was good, but not perfect, though you’ll have the option to review matches. However, we missed a few incorrect associations, which we found difficult to fix after the fact.

In addition to following and contacting friends, the AddressBook application can also add a business listing, like your favorite coffee shop chain. Having added the listing, you can then plot it on a map.

As with the Android 1.6 default address book, the AddressBook application includes a dialer, history, contact list, and favorites. While it doesn’t replace the Android’s address book, Asurion’s app does integrate with it, using the Android call screens and honoring edits between Android’s native address book and the AddressBook application.

The AddressBook application has some fairly large holes. In addition to the unintuitive editing of mismatched contacts, the application doesn’t support landscape mode and it force-closed after we integrated Facebook details. AddressBook’s focus is decidedly on reaching people and not on managing personal profiles; we didn’t see ways to update your own status in this app, for instance.

As for the future of the young application in the face of Android 2.0, Nancy Benovich Gilby, Asurion Mobile Applications’ VP of Engineering remains positive. “What [Google is] doing with Contacts,” Gilby wrote in an e-mail, “will give us more power and make it easier to provide deeper integration of content and services.”

It will be interesting to see how AddressBook’s social address book plays out once Android 2.0 becomes more widely available. In the meantime, if you’ve tried the app, share your thoughts in the comments.

The rumors are true! Hero will be getting an Eclair update. We ask for your patience as we update Sense for the fancy new Android OS.

A twitter update from Hero states the above – and now we can all make a sigh of relief. It looks like the Hero will be getting an Eclair update which will hopefully further improve lag issues and other problems currently being faced by customers. Unfortunately we dont know when this update might come, lets just hope soon! 🙂

We apologize for being fanish, but Google has pulled off something with its new Navigation elements in Google Maps (or is it Google Maps in a Navigation app? It’s hard to tell) that has serious ramifications for a navigation device industry used to charging money for functionality. The introduction of satellite view, a tasteful touch of street view (peep a still of your next turn, or see your destination), and of course regular stuff like spoken directions and street names, and Google’s voice recognition applied to search (anywhere on the device just tap voice search and start your phrase with “navigate to”) make this a pretty astonishing offering for what’s essentially a free app with the purchase of an Android 2.0 device. The biggest worry here is that if you lose signal you won’t be able to pull maps, but while there’s no whole-map caching, it does cache a route when you enter it in, so as long as you don’t stray too far from the beaten path you should be fine with a dropped signal here or there. But enough of our blather, check out a video walkthrough after the break.

@ Engadget (Nilay Patel)

We just got a stack of Droid review units at Engadget HQ, and we’re told that this is in fact the final packaging. The charger is just Micro USB, and that’s really all you get in the box — the docks will cost you extra. We’re digging for pricing info on those, we’ll let you know.

Droid Unboxing

Sure, the DROID’s getting all the attention today, but you might recall that it’s not the only thing Verizon has in the pipe has it preps its first Android assault — HTC’s got the Droid Eris in there somewhere, too, which is shaping up to be little more than a branded Hero in a slightly different shell. Against the insanely-spec’d DROID, that may not be a drool-worthy proposition, but fortunately, it’s looking like Verizon is going to be pursuing an aggressive tiered pricing strategy that might allow these phones to coexist in peace and everlasting harmony: unlike the DROID’s $199 sticker, gdgt has it on good authority that the Droid Eris will run a hundie less at $99. That spanks Sprint’s version which currently runs $179.99, but hey, if this means we’re going to see a price war down in the 528MHz trenches for the Android midrange, we’re all for it.

If you haven’t yet heard of HTC, you will soon.

The Taiwanese mobile-phone company with U.S. headquarters in Bellevue, Wash., is launching a huge campaign this week to raise the profile of the HTC brand.

An ad blitz trumpeting a new slogan – “quietly brilliant” – is intended to reach 95 percent of Americans at least 36 times during the holiday season, when you just may be shopping for a new phone.

Simultaneously, the company is planning to double the size of a secretive Seattle “innovation center” led by former Microsoft designers where HTC is creating software to give its phones unique style and features.

It’s the crescendo of a three-year effort to reposition HTC from a faceless Asian device manufacturer into a consumer brand that stands in buyers’ minds alongside Apple, BlackBerry, Nokia and Motorola.

Already the 12-year-old company has sold $1.6 billion worth of phones in the United States – $4.6 billion globally. That includes every model so far running Google’s Android software and 80 percent of the Windows Mobile smartphones.

But the company is still relatively unknown among mainstream phone buyers, who are steadily moving toward premium smartphones.

HTC’s big momentum in this market is also about to be challenged by new Android phones coming soon from Motorola and others.

Meanwhile, phone companies, motivated by AT&T’s success with the iPhone, are encouraging HTC to raise its profile independently and in cooperative ad campaigns.

The carriers “have been asking us to build a consumer-facing brand such that we are driving customers into stores saying ‘I want my first HTC, I want my HTC,'” said Steve Seto, director of marketing.

But the company is doing more than advertise to build its identity.

It’s also investing in design studios, including an industrial design ship it acquired in San Francisco and a user-interface software lab that it has quietly built up over the past two years in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood.

The Seattle lab was initiated by Horace Luke, a University of Washington graduate and veteran of Microsoft and Nike who was hired in 2006 to lead HTC’s design work.

Luke, who is based in Taiwan, tapped Drew Bamford, a former Microsoft user-experience designer, to lead the Seattle innovation center.

It’s not just Microsofties, though. They tapped into the unusually high concentration of wireless talent in Seattle.

Getting to see Bamford is tricky.

You have to find an unmarked door in an old brick building that leads to a dark hallway, where there are no signs of HTC.

When the elevator stops, you pass through a heavy steel gate and walk around a dividing wall before you see anything or the 30 employees.

Then it’s a bright, funky space with lots of whiteboards, big monitors and magazine-like displays of various customer types HTC is targeting.

There’s also a sound studio where all the various ringtones on HTC phones are developed.

But the tour is fairly limited – the whiteboards are mostly erased, and nobody can discuss what they’re developing for the future.

The art is not just in the software but in balancing the competing demands for the phone’s on-screen real estate.

Working with T-Mobile USA, HTC’s phones are “primarily branded T-Mobile and have kind of a T-Mobile experience or even a Google experience,” Bamford explained.

Yet HTC is also working to introduce design features that are consistent across all of its phones, identifying them as HTC devices.

“We have an ambition to maintain both of those businesses but, as a company, the general trend is more toward building an HTC-branded experience,” Bamford said.

The new foundation is the “Sense” interface for Android phones that Bamford’s team developed and released this summer on the HTC Hero from Sprint.

Its ability to be easily customized is a focus of the “quietly brilliant” campaign.

Seto is another local hire working to raise HTC’s profile while navigating the complicated relationships with its various partners.

He was hired a year ago from Starbucks, where he was brand director.

It was his job to make sure people had a consistent Starbucks experience around the globe, whether they bought and drank the coffee directly or through a partner or licensee.

Directly and through collaborative campaigns with carriers, he said, “we’re really amping it up.”

Richard Adhikari

Apple tablet chatterers were given more to chew on with what might or might not have been an inadvertent spill courtesy of the executive editor of The New York Times. Meanwhile, the growth of the Android platform may mean more trouble for Nokia than for Apple. Incidentally, Nokia’s also making trouble for Apple in the form of a large patent lawsuit.

Talk that Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) is inching ever closer to making its rumored tablet computer a reality is making the rounds. In fact, Cupertino could sell more than 2 million tablets in 2010, according to the expectations of analyst Brian Marshall.

Meanwhile, Apple should continue to gain strength in other areas with the new iMacs it introduced last week and the strength of its iTunes App Store, which now carries more than 100,000 apps.

Though it remains on a general upward trend since the summer, Apple’s stock has cooled down a bit from the heights it hit last week following the company’s strong Q4 fiscal report. It closed Tuesday at US$197.37, down about 2.5 percent.

Good Medicine From the Mystery Tablet

On Tuesday, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Apple is trying to get Australian media companies to provide content for its supposed iTablet.

Earlier this month, Bill Keller, executive editor at The New York Times, appeared to hint at a staff meeting that the paper is developing content for an upcoming Apple tablet.

“We need to figure out the right journalistic product to deliver to mobile platforms and devices,” he said. “I’m hoping we can get the newsroom more actively involved in the challenge of delivering our best journalism in the form of Times Reader, iPhone apps, WAP, or the impending Apple slate, or whatever comes after that.” A video of his speech was posted in the Nieman Journalism Lab blog.

Apple, for its part, has publicly divulged zero details on what features such a tablet might offer, or even whether the company really is developing one. Even so, expectations for a tablet have been running high for months, and the gadget blog Gizmodo published a description of such a product in August based on an anonymous source who claimed to have inside info on the device. The Apple tablet looks like a large iPhone and will have a 10-inch screen, according to the article. It will come in two editions, one with a webcam and the other for educational use. The price would be between $700 and $900.

That pricing may be a bit steep for non-Mac fans. An online survey of 753 consumers on Apple tablet pricing commissioned by online consumer electronics shopping site Retrevo found that 64 percent of PC users and 32 percent of Mac users wanted to pay less than $600 for an Apple tablet.

The survey found 16 percent of PC users and 27 percent of Mac users would pay between $600 and $800 for an iTablet. More than twice as many Mac users as PC users — 41 percent compared to 20 percent — would pay more than $800.

Another Winner for Cupertino?

Apple will likely ship 2.2 million iTablets in 2010, according to an estimate by Broadpoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall, though he categorized that forecast as “conservative.” Shipments should begin in or around March 2009, he expects.

The iTablet’s sales Download Free eBook – The Edge of Success: 9 Building Blocks to Double Your Sales will be between US$1 billion and $2 billion for 2010, he estimates. “I don’t think it will be huge,” he told MacNewsWorld. Total sales for calendar 2010 will exceed $53 billion, he said. That will be 12.8 percent higher than Marshall’s estimate for calendar year 2009 sales, which he pegs at $47.2 billion.

For Cupertino, perhaps, sales of $1 billion to $2 billion don’t mean much, but any other company would be happy to have a product that performs that well in the first nine months of its introduction.

Of iMacs and Apps

Last week, Apple introduced new iMacs with larger screens. Resellers reportedly expect demand for these computers to be strong.

“With compelling new products like the new Macs, I think Apple will continue its share gain in the PC market even though it’s not currently playing in the fastest-growing segment, which is netbooks,” Broadpoint AmTech’s Marshall said. With Cupertino having about 5 percent of the global PC market, Marshall thinks it has plenty of room to grow.

Meanwhile, the iTune Apps Store, which is already the clear leader of its market, is running away from the competition. There are about 101,500 apps in the store, almost 93,000 of these are active, and there are more than 22,000 unique app publishers, all according to the tracking Web site 148apps.biz.

That puts the iPhone in a secure position, as a wide availability of apps enhance the mobile phone experience for many consumers. They are such an important factor in handset sales that wireless phone carriers, handset manufacturers and even Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) are setting up their own app stores.

Android Phones Not a Direct Threat?

Handset manufacturers and carriers are unleashing a slew of Android phones into the market. About 50 Android phones will hit the market soon, according to the site Wiseandroid.

However, Android will mostly take market share away from Nokia’s (NYSE: NOK) Symbian OS rather than the iPhone, according to a report from In-Stat.

“Phone makers want cheap and popular devices, so Android is a fit,” Allen Nogee, a principal analyst at In-Stat, told MacNewsWorld. “They know that RIM, Microsoft and Apple will take market share if they don’t unify behind one strong OS. Android works for those companies that aren’t backing another OS, and there can be power in numbers.”

Sales of the iPhone will remain strong, Nogee predicts. “Apple sold about 8 million iPhones in 2008 and will sell close to 32 million this year,” he said. “This will more than double again in 2014 but, by then, Apple might have two or three models.”

Nokia, Apple and the Courts

One new factor that could possibly impact the money Apple makes from iPhone sales is a lawsuit Nokia launched last week.

Nokia filed a complaint against Cupertino in the Federal District Court in Delaware alleging that the iPhone infringes 10 of its patents for various wireless standards. Nokia says the patents cover wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption, and it claims they are infringed by all iPhone models shipped since the device was introduced in 2007.

The lawsuit is an attempt by Nokia to slow down the iPhone’s runaway market growth, contended Julien Blin, CEO and principal analyst at JBB Research. “Nokia’s share of the smartphone market just took a big hit, falling from 41 percent to 35 percent,” he told MacNewsWorld. “The timing might not be a coincidence at all, especially after Apple reported a great quarter.”

As further proof of his suspicions, Blin pointed out reports that suggest Apple has been working with Nokia for at least 12 months to hammer out a patent agreement. “Nokia is better off dealing with its own issues rather than trying to slow down Apple, because it’s unlikely to succeed,” Blin added.

“The lawsuit will take years,” agreed Broadpoint AmTech’s Marshall. “Nokia is probably using some of Apple’s patents as well, so expect a counter-suit soon.”

Most importantly, the lawsuit won’t impact the market. “It won’t scare away investors,” Marshall said. “I view it as a minor inconvenience.”

For many of the 1,000-plus developers at the Sprint Open Developers Conference on Tuesday, there was but one word on their lips: Android.

While talk in the past has focused on Windows Mobile or Palm, the biggest topic of conversation at the ninth annual conference in Santa Clara was Google’s 1-year-old smart phone operating system, which has become the darling of the mobile development world.

Frenzied programmers tired of the iPhone as well as companies looking for the next big thing are increasingly turning their attention to the new kid on the block and throwing significant resources behind the fledgling platform.

“Now that Android has many more handsets and carriers, it really looks like it will grow big,” said Jaime Gonzales, tech director for Buongiorno, a mobile content company. “I think Android will pass the iPhone in users and developers and eventually in the number of applications.”

Gonzales is just one of many developers who are captivated by Android’s upside. The free and open source operating system premiered a year ago on just one phone model, the G1, but in recent months has gained support from three of the top four U.S. carriers and is being built into phones from Motorola, Samsung, HTC, LG and many others.

Flurry, a mobile analytics company, reported this week that Android app development has jumped 94 percent in September and October.

“Flurry market data shows that Android continues to gain interest from application developers, and that iPhone is no longer the only game in town,” said Simon Khalaf, Flurry president and chief executive officer. “Developers who used to develop only for iPhone are now adding Android applications to their lineup in record numbers.”

Rishi Mallik, senior manager of business development at video streaming service Qik, said Android is just one of many platforms it supported over the last year. But in the last several months, Qik has made Android its primary focus for research and development.

“We had an idea that Android was going to be big but after playing with the platform and seeing the trends in the market, it really crystallized the fact that our hunch was correct,” Mallik said.

It’s not just the momentum that is opening eyes. Developers also see a viable alternative to Apple’s mighty iPhone and its App Store, which now boasts more than 85,000 apps. In some cases, Apple’s success in attracting developers has prompted some programmers to look for the next big opportunity, away from the crowded App Store. The Android Marketplace, by contrast, boasts 10,000 apps.

“With the iPhone, it’s harder and harder to get notoriety for developers,” said Justin Schwab, a partner with Synova Ventures, which develops mobile apps for companies. “A lot of our clients were watching the market to see if it was worth investing in another platform, and now they feel they can monetize on Android.”

For carriers, Android presents an opportunity to do battle with Apple’s iPhone, which runs exclusively on AT&T’s network.

Steve Elfman, president of network operations and wholesale for Sprint, said it’s not just about iPhone envy. He said the Android ecosystem is growing with so much broad support that it has the potential to become a new standard for the industry.

“In the old PC days, Apple came out with a vertically integrated computer that was great but was a niche product, while Windows became the operating system for all manufacturers to build on,” he said. “I think Android has the opportunity to be the Windows of 2010 and beyond.”

Sony Ericsson has put a “teaser” page on its website promising a big announcement on November 3. This could be the day it’s going to formally unveil the Xperia X3, this company’s first smartphone running Google’s Android OS.

The teaser is, of course, very vague:

We’re looking forward to November 3rd.
We think you should be too.

Still, the biggest announcement Sony Ericsson could be planning for that day is the unveiling of the X3. This very high-end model has appeared in numerous rumors going back to this summer, so the launch could finally be getting close.

An Overview of the Sony Ericsson Xperia X3
The name “X3” hasn’t been 100% confirmed. Some reports say it may have been changed to “X10″ or the ” Infinity”. In any case, the code-name is definitely “Rachael”.

According to unconfirmed reports, this smartphone will have a tablet shape dominated by a 4-inch, 800-by-400-pixel touchscreen.

It will reportedly run the Android OS on a 1 GHz processor Snapdragon processor. Rather than use Google’s standard user interface, Sony Ericsson has created a proprietary one for this device that emphasizes social networking (see here).

One of the highlights of the X3 will apparently be its 8 MPx camera with flash and support for VGA (640 x 480 pixels) video recording at 30 fps. This will offer face and smile detection, as well as image stabilization.

It will allegedly be a quad-band (850/900/1800/1900) GSM phone with dual-band (900/2100) 3G: 10 Mbps HSDPA and 2 Mbps HSUPA. Bluetooth 2.1 and Wi-Fi g will also be included.

In addition, it will have a GPS receiver and a microSDHC memory card slot.

Pricing for the Sony Ericsson Xperia X3 is not yet known.