Windows "everywhere" may boost e-books

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by Crowl

It is actually a term that covers more and more of the mobile phone market each year though as hardware advances give the makers less reason to make the simpler phones for established markets.

Equally, there are phones now which are not being labled smartphones, which several years ago would of been.

[Hellmark]

Yeah, my current phone runs Symbian OS, has the ability to add all sorts of apps, and do fancy things, but isn't a smart phone.

[yagiz]

Originally Posted by Crowl

Interesting stats, but realistically web traffic clearly doesn't equate to market share in any sense when you aren't discussing either websites or browsers, especially when you have far more valid figures such as handset sales etc. to compare instead.

That's part of my point... I guess, at some stage in such a discussion, we'll get stuck because of "lies, damn lies, stats" however I think the phone usage is more appropriate as a measure of success. What I like about iPhone (where Android phones are getting stronger as well) is that it became a platform for applications. It's obviously much more than hardware now. 2 billion app downloads is seriously impressive, in my opinion. It's not mail+calendar in your pocket that changes the mobile market, it's been there for 10 years I think. But what Apple has done with iPhone is much more than that. Fair enough, it's not a "fart" app that revolutionize the industry however there are 70.000 apps out there so people are "using" their iPhones or iPod touches for things other than phone, e-mail and calendar. That's the whole point of being "mobile", isn't it? Doing a multitude of things with a hand-held device.

Last week, Palm announced their development program and their platform has become more open. Now it's free to develop and publish an app under certain conditions. They had to do that in order to have a chance to generate a momentum that resembles Apple's.

Some analysts are predicting that Android will be the #1 mobile platform as soon as 2012, thanks to Google, thanks to its availability on multiple hardware and its growing app market.

So, my criticism towards RIM was from this point of view. I just can't believe that RIM is not taking this seriously or they're snubbing the growth and the potential of the non-enterprise market. It's just strange...

[Crowl]

Originally Posted by yagiz

That's part of my point... I guess, at some stage in such a discussion, we'll get stuck because of "lies, damn lies, stats" however I think the phone usage is more appropriate as a measure of success.

That would be fair enough, but to blindly equate browser traffic to phone usage is not even something that apple's own pr dept would even try to claim.

Usage patterns vary and trying to write off the parts that don't suit your argument, the strengths and weaknesses of the various devices are different, but that doesn't invalidate things since a smartphone is a multifunction device not simply a mobile browser.

Mind you, if somebody wanted to be malicious, you could easily claim that web traffic was higher on the iphone because they had to logon to websites to read mms until recently or maybe if they were in new york they were simply unable to complete a call properly and decided to do something else with their phone.

So, my criticism towards RIM was from this point of view. I just can't believe that RIM is not taking this seriously or they're snubbing the growth and the potential of the non-enterprise market. It's just strange...

It would be strange if it was in the slightest bit true, if you look at what they are doing then you would see that while they are not ignoring the enterprise market with new releases, they are also taking steps to improve features that appeal to consumers as well e.g. the new version of their IM came out yesterday, things like their appstore and social networking clients are all updated regularly and obviously the various browser-related announcements lately show that they know where they need to improve that.

What I find strange is why some people seem so eager to declare RIM RIP, they have come up against bigger competition in the past and have still survived, not to mention the obvious fact that the more competition in the market the better for us as customers.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Crowl

Mind you, if somebody wanted to be malicious, you could easily claim that web traffic was higher on the iphone because they had to logon to websites to read mms until recently or maybe if they were in new york they were simply unable to complete a call properly and decided to do something else with their phone.

Or because your phone decides to connect to Internet without you knowing it! Bad, bad iPhone!