Quote:
Originally Posted by
Maestro64 
So what going to happen to these old phones, they are going to turn into hand me downs before you know it.
Like in my case, the wife will upgrade, since she maxed out the current iPhone and wants more power that 3.0 and 3G (S) will offer her. The question is what do we do with the current iphone, obvious one of the kids want it, but I am not interested in paying $70 a month for them to use, so I considering cracking it and add it as an $9.99 phone on the wife plan, they do not need all the data anyway.
I think you will see more an more of this and you do not have data plan part of the value of the phone goes away.
This is the interesting dynamic as you note. The purpose of pushing smartphones that now (refurbished) run as little as $79 subsidized is to promote the very expensive data plans that go with them. Second tier providers and much smaller companies are offering unlimited everything plans at various amounts. A second front might be MMS message size and dumb phones. Most message limits right now are about 300-500k. If a provider like Verizon or T-Mobile knocked this up considerably, it might further undermine the value proposition of a data plan further.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bageljoey 
You may have just hit on the method Apple will use to market the iPhone to the big corporate bosses.
- "Switch away from BlackBerry and your employees will have to listen to you during your meetings! "
- "No more wondering what their hands are doing under the boardroom table! (and who wants to think about that, anyway?)"
The fortune 500 will drop like flies now...

I think it has more to do with age than anything else. I've watched the kids type in all manners across all sort of phones, all at ridiculous speeds. They'll figure out the touch screens just as easily. I've already watched a young teen girl use the same phone I have, LG Dare, to type some insanely long message at crazy speeds using T9 without even looking.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Maestro64 
Gee I see kids typing out msgs on numeric keypads phone while it is in their pockets, it can be done. I even witness a girl driving down the road typing out a msg without looking at the phone or taking her eyes off the road, I was amazed, but made sure I stayed clear of her.
Most kids do not type in full sentences or full word to be exact... if they get a few letters or words wrong that is okay with them.
They can do much more than a few words. My wife works at the middle school level and I have friends at all levels of education. If a kid has a hand in their pocket or below the level of their desk, they are texting PERIOD. They can easily do it in a purse, backpack or pocket. They can type whatever they want and do it at ridiculous speeds, often without looking.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Virgil-TB2 
Well, yeah. It's not a simple thing given that the success of either is sort of pushing the success of it's own competition. The "smartphone" market is booming in general and RIM is in fact growing as you say.
I was just making an entirely subjective observation based on what I see on my train every day. Over the last year or so the iPhone has been gradually replacing the Blackberry (as something I see people using on the train to the University), to the point that it seems roughly 50/50 right now. Given that I'm in Canada and the iPhone wasn't available a year ago I think it's pretty remarkable, but my town is a big tech town and it is the train to the University so take it with the appropriate giant grains of salt.

They might be iPod touches as well. My friend just tried out the iPod Touch combo with the Mifi from Verizon and really loves the combo. In fact the Mifi is a very interesting little wrinkle in all these discussions. Having used it with my laptop it is really a possible game changer.