Comparatively, it is always the siemens and the ericssons (the GSM manufacturers) who get caught with bribing overseas government officials and companies.
GSM can't be in over 100 countries without going into 50-60 countries where bribery is the norm.
But there has been a sea change in the handset market caused by the iPhone.
Nokia's market share of smartphones will dwindle to below 25%. Symbian users will not migrate to Maemo if iPhone is better.
Whereupon, Nokia will switch to Android.
C.
There is no sea of change with respect to Nokia.
The smartphone market has always been overhyped --- especially with Nokia's share. Nokia's smartphones have always been used as high-end feature phones. We are talking about the largest Nokia N-series phone market is China --- where they don't even have a single 3G network.
Same thing with linux phones --- the majority of linux phones in the whole world are manufactured by Motorola for China --- where they are not used as smartphones.
No I did not change the question. My original point was about the iPhone competing with the BlackBerry. Then someone else said in Europe and Asia, it's the iPhone competing against Nokia, Samsung, LG phones. My next point was that I've never seen any Samsung or LG phones that handle email sophisticate email accounts, or sync calendars/ contacts thr way the Blackberry can. I don't know anyone with a Nokia smartphone so I did not comment on them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jahonen
So you changed the question did you?
I haven't used blackberry (or samsung) for E-mail so I can't compare the quality of the experience, but that wasn't your original question. I also stated "with varying degrees of cumbersomness and ease". The current clients are quite good though.
Your original question however was, are the "other" phones used for business E-mail , contacts, calendaring and documents in Europe and Asia and the answer to that was: yes. In fact for a decade now (since the intro of the first QWERTY Communicator series). Even more so with the current E-series enhanced mail clients and encrypted memory and filesystem capabilities.
Does innovation really mean that every time some "feature" is added that few people use, or can even understand, in some cases, that the manufacturer has innovated?
Or does it mean that a company takes a hard look at those features, decides which ones are the most important for the largest number of customers, and attempts to implement them in a way that makes them much easier, and pleasurable to use, while working on others of lessor importance to most customers in order to get them as "right" as possible, so as to enable them in a more useful manner?
To me, the latter is what "real" innovation is. This is the Apple approach, while the former is the approach that most other companies seem to prefer.
Very good stuff. Yes, this is clearly a central theme to many of the arguments about that Forbes article, and comparing Nokia and Apple, and around the definition of what it is to innovate. At my blog someone said that Apple is the renovator. They don't really innovate, they take a system which seems to be past its peak, and they totally renovate it, which then turns that near-dead opportunity into something far greater. Look at the PC before the Mac. There is no way my parents (grandparents aged people) would ever have used a DOS based personal computer, but Windows is a copy of the Mac. Look at the Newton and how it renovated the PDA space. Look at the iPod. Sony, for gosh's sake, had abandoned the portable music player market as mature, not worth fighting for, and focused on the Playstation, but Apple came in, and totally renovated the portable music player market and made umpteen billions of revenues and profits - and sold more Macs - because of the iPod and iTunes. Now same with iPhone. They came in and took something which was fundamentally lousy, and made it easy.
That is an innovation CERTAINLY. But it is ONE innovation. Please remember, I never ever ever said in my blog that Apple is not innovative. I said Apple is innovative and is so specifically with the iPhone. But Forbes said Nokia was not. Nokia has been more innovative than Apple. It does not matter whether Nokia's innovations all have been succesfful or not, that is another issue, but you cannot accuse Nokia of a lack of innovation (but you can accuse Motorola for example for a lack of innovation in the phones space)
My problem with the N97 is that it?s specs are a stopgap device that is priced at the SAME price as the iPhone and the Palm Pre despite it still having the (ARMv6) ARM11 CPU that Apple put in the iPhone back in 2007, instead of the (ARMv7-A) Cortex A8. It also has half the RAM and half the HSDPA bandwidth of other flagship smartphones coming out in mid-2009.
Personally, I think Nokia needs something great to shine again and the N97 is not going to cut it simply because it offers a 5Mpx camera, which is quite easy to do when you offer more room for a camera.
One thing that hasn?t been mentioned much is that the Flash in the 3GS may be faster than the previous devices, which may explain why it?s even beating out other devices using the Cortex A-8. This is not in any innovative, but something that should be noted AFTER the innovative or deal-breaking aspects of a device are stated in an article about innovative. At the end, this is where a comment about the camera?s high-megapixels should go.
I hear you, and you make good points. I think on the one hand, Nokia is now "believing" in the touch-screen form factor (Nokia trialled this a few years before the iPhone and found it not appealing to mass markets). So much like the original iPhone 2G was Apple's "stop-gap" measure to rush out an "iPod phone" now the N97 is Nokia's stop gap to release a (high end) touch-screen smartphone. Much like how iPhone 3GS is 2 generations beyond the original iPhone and far far better as a complete phone, so too will the later editions of the followers to N97 be better touch-screen smartphones by Nokia.
But you do clearly ignore major elements that the N97 has which the iPhone does not have. The full QWERTY keyboard is something most of Apple's touch-screen rivals are now doing, from Palm to LG to Blackberry. Apple is almost the only smartphone maker who refuses to include the QWERTY while QWERTY based non-touch phones outsell touch-phones with no QWERTY by far more than 2 to 1 globally. This is not a trivial difference.
Another is the second camera. Most in the USA will say that nobody does video calls but in reality, over 10% of 3G users globally use video calls (occasionally) mostly, by the way, it is the parents calling kids when putting them to sleep etc - or grandparents connecting with grandkids again to see them - while 3G video calls are only used rarely per month, there is a growing user base and many carriers/operators really want this feature. Out of all 3G phones out there far more than 90% support 3G video calls, but Apple doesn't.
And obviously the 5 megapixel camera and a flash. Yes, just raising megapixels does not a good camera make, but Nokia is using the world's most expensive branded German optics, Carl Zeiss brand on the N-Series, so these are by every camera measurement - better than any non-branded plastic optics of any cameraphone brand including iPhone 3GS. Now, if for you the camera is not important, then you don't care. But if you already have a 5 megapixel cameraphone which you use daily (like I do), and then you have to decide to dump that, and pick either the N97 or the 3GS, there is no contest; there is no going back to 3 megapixels. You go with 5 megapixels every time, just like if you need your iTunes library, you go with Apple every time. These are now the distinctions that arise when we compare phones and features. Not everybody will love an N97 just like not everyone will love the 3GS.
You were right. In italy it is not technically illegal to have subsidies, only that the rules are ver specific of what you need to do and for practical purpses, subsidies are not used at all. I was not clear enough, sorry about that.
But you say I am not competent as a consultant. That is ok, you are entitled to your opinion and I trust you made it based on reading at least something that I have written.
I am sure you can name for us here at Apple Insider, then who are those authors in this industry who have discussed handset subsidies in their books and you consider reliable consultants to this industry. I need to go read their books.. I happen to have industry experts such as the chairmen of such organizations as the MDA (Mobile Data Association), MMA (Mobile Marketing Association), MoMO (Mobile Monday), GSA (GSM Suppliers Association) etc endorsing my books, almost all of which discuss handset subsidies as well. But I'm sure you have better authors for me to read up and learn about this industry?
When I first read his blog almost three years ago, I had the same reaction about his "modesty." But what does that matter? The guy is seriously interested in sharing information about the huge opportunity that is mobile. And I thank him for it. It doesn't mean I think he's always right, (one should always take what one reads on the web with many grains of salt) and I've debated with him over there on his blog. But one thing you'll notice is that he'll always back things up with data (and historical facts), and he's always open to new data that will change his mind.
I am arrogant, I know that, it is what they said about me way back when I was at Nokia HQ, and it shows in how I write and speak. I'm sorry about that. I try to compensate by engaging and discussing and trying to illustrate my point(s) of view, with evidence, with statistics and with user cases. I am known for those.
I really appreciate it, Mark, that you say you've followed me for 3 years and feel I do share info to try to prove my points, and that I'm open to change my own mind. I do try to think I am still able to accept the occasional new viewpoint, even being 49 years of age (it get more difficult by the year, trust, me. Like getting to start to Twitter - I was thinking last year, do i REALLY have to learn yet another social network, is this never going to end..)
But here at Apple Insider, in this particular thread, I think I've found even more delightful and insightful discussions than typical on most forums. You guys clearly have studied the smartphone space deeply and discussed it often and been quite tolerant of opposing view points, that makes for healthy learning.
Oh, and someone asked a while back, how did I find this discussion - it was my blog of coures, I monitor where the visitors come from. Whenever I find that a given website or blog or forum sends many visitors on one day, I come over to say hello (if I can). If they make it too difficult to sign up, I give up, but like your site here allows rather easy sign-up, I wanted to try to join. Some sites have members who clearly don't enjoy that, I won't pester them, but you guys here have been very friendly, and I believe some of you have also visited the blog and left comments there (where we have also many good discussions about Forbes/Nokia/Apple/smartphones ha-ha..)
Ok, will go now, will return for more replies. Oh, and if you missed it, I have written Part 2 of the smartphones realities, what is the decisive factor to smartphone success globally. You may be surprised ha-ha..
Does innovation really mean that every time some "feature" is added that few people use, or can even understand, in some cases, that the manufacturer has innovated?
Or does it mean that a company takes a hard look at those features, decides which ones are the most important for the largest number of customers, and attempts to implement them in a way that makes them much easier, and pleasurable to use, while working on others of lessor importance to most customers in order to get them as "right" as possible, so as to enable them in a more useful manner?
To me, the latter is what "real" innovation is. This is the Apple approach, while the former is the approach that most other companies seem to prefer.
Very good stuff. Yes, this is clearly a central theme to many of the arguments about that Forbes article, and comparing Nokia and Apple, and around the definition of what it is to innovate. At my blog someone said that Apple is the renovator. They don't really innovate, they take a system which seems to be past its peak, and they totally renovate it, which then turns that near-dead opportunity into something far greater. Look at the PC before the Mac. There is no way my parents (grandparents aged people) would ever have used a DOS based personal computer, but Windows is a copy of the Mac. Look at the Newton and how it renovated the PDA space. Look at the iPod. Sony, for gosh's sake, had abandoned the portable music player market as mature, not worth fighting for, and focused on the Playstation, but Apple came in, and totally renovated the portable music player market and made umpteen billions of revenues and profits - and sold more Macs - because of the iPod and iTunes. Now same with iPhone. They came in and took something which was fundamentally lousy, and made it easy.
That is an innovation CERTAINLY. But it is ONE innovation. Please remember, I never ever ever said in my blog that Apple is not innovative. I said Apple is innovative and is so specifically with the iPhone. But Forbes said Nokia was not. Nokia has been more innovative than Apple. It does not matter whether Nokia's innovations all have been succesfful or not, that is another issue, but you cannot accuse Nokia of a lack of innovation (but you can accuse Motorola for example for a lack of innovation in the phones space)
Tomi Ahonen :-)
It's interesting that you use the word "renovation" rather than "innovation". They are the two sides of the same coin.
It's also interesting that you think that in 1984, the computer industry was "past its peak". As someone who was involved with computers since high school in the mid '60's, I hardly could agree that by 1984 the personal computer market was past its peak. Indeed, it had just eight years of history behind it.
As for the Newton and the PDA industry, I'm a bit confused here. While there were a few truly primitive devices around when Apple introduced the Newton, one could hardly have called it an "industry". In addition, the Newton was wildly different from anything else around at the time, of for some time after.
Digital portable music players such as the early Creatives, were in a nascent industry. One that had not gotten on its feet yet. It wasn't expiring. Apple's iPod, which I don't think Jobs and company at first fully understood as being a major product at the time, was much superior to what was available. but it was a young business for everyone. iTunes them made it almost a requirement for many people.
Are you saying that the phone industry was also "past it's peak" when the iPhone was introduced?
My thoughts about Nokia's innovation is a bit different than yours, perhaps.
There is the old model, and there is the new model.
Nokia's innovations were, and still seem to be, within the space of the old model. That which I mentioned before; add more things until you burst. More buttons, more levels of menus, etc.
Apple's innovation is to make a new model. That's perhaps the most important innovation in the past ten years, since the first Palmphone.
So Nokia can continue to "innovate" within that old model space. But today, that isn't being seen as innovation at all. It's being seen as stodgy.
... and my three major blog postings before the iPhone actually was launched, were each considered the best blog of the week by my peers, ie the mobilists (and those of you who remember, I did correctly predict 10M sales, the lack of worldwide love of the 2G version, the expansion of features,
Tomi has arrived at AI, Where do we hide? Sorry Tomi... only joking. Ha-Ha.
I do feel I have to question your claims (in bold above) in your opening post.
I don't think it takes an industry expert to predict that the iPhone would receive an "expansion of features" during it's (still) short lifetime.
Similarly your criticism of 2G, particularly outside the US, was shared by many other people. The 2G iPhone was only sold in a handful of European countries, so the "the lack of worldwide love" didn't really have a chance to materialize.
Here's what you predicted for iPhone's 1st quarter of sales.
Quote:
The July-to-Sept 2007 quarter needs to achieve 383,000 iPhones sold.
I posted a comment at the time suggesting that you might have severely underestimated the consumer interest in the iPhone. Total iPhones sold, up to that point: 1.389 Million.
Remember that you based all your calculations on the first 18 months of iPhone sales. (Not the 12 months of 2008. A mistake a lot of people made)
Taking into account possible price changes, hardware changes (3G) and a staggered worldwide launch you concluded with:
Quote:
I've personally gone on record already months ago, that I think Apple will reach 10 M but not much more
Apple sold 17.377 million iPhones in your 18 month timeframe.
Tomi, it was a noble effort. You looked at all the possible variations and brought your considerable industry knowledge to the subject. Your friends in mobile doubtless all agreed with you and you won the 'post of the week". However you were wrong! And wrong by quite a margin.
This was a prediction. An educated guess. There is nothing wrong... with being wrong. Just please don't turn up a couple of years later and say that you were right.
Comments
This is how Qualcomm "wins".
http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2009/0...ticompetitive/
Comparatively, it is always the siemens and the ericssons (the GSM manufacturers) who get caught with bribing overseas government officials and companies.
GSM can't be in over 100 countries without going into 50-60 countries where bribery is the norm.
But there has been a sea change in the handset market caused by the iPhone.
Nokia's market share of smartphones will dwindle to below 25%. Symbian users will not migrate to Maemo if iPhone is better.
Whereupon, Nokia will switch to Android.
C.
There is no sea of change with respect to Nokia.
The smartphone market has always been overhyped --- especially with Nokia's share. Nokia's smartphones have always been used as high-end feature phones. We are talking about the largest Nokia N-series phone market is China --- where they don't even have a single 3G network.
Same thing with linux phones --- the majority of linux phones in the whole world are manufactured by Motorola for China --- where they are not used as smartphones.
So you changed the question did you?
I haven't used blackberry (or samsung) for E-mail so I can't compare the quality of the experience, but that wasn't your original question. I also stated "with varying degrees of cumbersomness and ease". The current clients are quite good though.
Your original question however was, are the "other" phones used for business E-mail , contacts, calendaring and documents in Europe and Asia and the answer to that was: yes. In fact for a decade now (since the intro of the first QWERTY Communicator series). Even more so with the current E-series enhanced mail clients and encrypted memory and filesystem capabilities.
Regs, Jarkko
To bad the Blackberry can't:-
a) set up a new Gmail account from the handset,
b) handle email attachments larger than 4MB.
Does innovation really mean that every time some "feature" is added that few people use, or can even understand, in some cases, that the manufacturer has innovated?
Or does it mean that a company takes a hard look at those features, decides which ones are the most important for the largest number of customers, and attempts to implement them in a way that makes them much easier, and pleasurable to use, while working on others of lessor importance to most customers in order to get them as "right" as possible, so as to enable them in a more useful manner?
To me, the latter is what "real" innovation is. This is the Apple approach, while the former is the approach that most other companies seem to prefer.
Very good stuff. Yes, this is clearly a central theme to many of the arguments about that Forbes article, and comparing Nokia and Apple, and around the definition of what it is to innovate. At my blog someone said that Apple is the renovator. They don't really innovate, they take a system which seems to be past its peak, and they totally renovate it, which then turns that near-dead opportunity into something far greater. Look at the PC before the Mac. There is no way my parents (grandparents aged people) would ever have used a DOS based personal computer, but Windows is a copy of the Mac. Look at the Newton and how it renovated the PDA space. Look at the iPod. Sony, for gosh's sake, had abandoned the portable music player market as mature, not worth fighting for, and focused on the Playstation, but Apple came in, and totally renovated the portable music player market and made umpteen billions of revenues and profits - and sold more Macs - because of the iPod and iTunes. Now same with iPhone. They came in and took something which was fundamentally lousy, and made it easy.
That is an innovation CERTAINLY. But it is ONE innovation. Please remember, I never ever ever said in my blog that Apple is not innovative. I said Apple is innovative and is so specifically with the iPhone. But Forbes said Nokia was not. Nokia has been more innovative than Apple. It does not matter whether Nokia's innovations all have been succesfful or not, that is another issue, but you cannot accuse Nokia of a lack of innovation (but you can accuse Motorola for example for a lack of innovation in the phones space)
Tomi Ahonen :-)
My problem with the N97 is that it?s specs are a stopgap device that is priced at the SAME price as the iPhone and the Palm Pre despite it still having the (ARMv6) ARM11 CPU that Apple put in the iPhone back in 2007, instead of the (ARMv7-A) Cortex A8. It also has half the RAM and half the HSDPA bandwidth of other flagship smartphones coming out in mid-2009.
Personally, I think Nokia needs something great to shine again and the N97 is not going to cut it simply because it offers a 5Mpx camera, which is quite easy to do when you offer more room for a camera.
One thing that hasn?t been mentioned much is that the Flash in the 3GS may be faster than the previous devices, which may explain why it?s even beating out other devices using the Cortex A-8. This is not in any innovative, but something that should be noted AFTER the innovative or deal-breaking aspects of a device are stated in an article about innovative. At the end, this is where a comment about the camera?s high-megapixels should go.
I hear you, and you make good points. I think on the one hand, Nokia is now "believing" in the touch-screen form factor (Nokia trialled this a few years before the iPhone and found it not appealing to mass markets). So much like the original iPhone 2G was Apple's "stop-gap" measure to rush out an "iPod phone" now the N97 is Nokia's stop gap to release a (high end) touch-screen smartphone. Much like how iPhone 3GS is 2 generations beyond the original iPhone and far far better as a complete phone, so too will the later editions of the followers to N97 be better touch-screen smartphones by Nokia.
But you do clearly ignore major elements that the N97 has which the iPhone does not have. The full QWERTY keyboard is something most of Apple's touch-screen rivals are now doing, from Palm to LG to Blackberry. Apple is almost the only smartphone maker who refuses to include the QWERTY while QWERTY based non-touch phones outsell touch-phones with no QWERTY by far more than 2 to 1 globally. This is not a trivial difference.
Another is the second camera. Most in the USA will say that nobody does video calls but in reality, over 10% of 3G users globally use video calls (occasionally) mostly, by the way, it is the parents calling kids when putting them to sleep etc - or grandparents connecting with grandkids again to see them - while 3G video calls are only used rarely per month, there is a growing user base and many carriers/operators really want this feature. Out of all 3G phones out there far more than 90% support 3G video calls, but Apple doesn't.
And obviously the 5 megapixel camera and a flash. Yes, just raising megapixels does not a good camera make, but Nokia is using the world's most expensive branded German optics, Carl Zeiss brand on the N-Series, so these are by every camera measurement - better than any non-branded plastic optics of any cameraphone brand including iPhone 3GS. Now, if for you the camera is not important, then you don't care. But if you already have a 5 megapixel cameraphone which you use daily (like I do), and then you have to decide to dump that, and pick either the N97 or the 3GS, there is no contest; there is no going back to 3 megapixels. You go with 5 megapixels every time, just like if you need your iTunes library, you go with Apple every time. These are now the distinctions that arise when we compare phones and features. Not everybody will love an N97 just like not everyone will love the 3GS.
Tomi Ahonen :-)
You were right. In italy it is not technically illegal to have subsidies, only that the rules are ver specific of what you need to do and for practical purpses, subsidies are not used at all. I was not clear enough, sorry about that.
But you say I am not competent as a consultant. That is ok, you are entitled to your opinion and I trust you made it based on reading at least something that I have written.
I am sure you can name for us here at Apple Insider, then who are those authors in this industry who have discussed handset subsidies in their books and you consider reliable consultants to this industry. I need to go read their books.. I happen to have industry experts such as the chairmen of such organizations as the MDA (Mobile Data Association), MMA (Mobile Marketing Association), MoMO (Mobile Monday), GSA (GSM Suppliers Association) etc endorsing my books, almost all of which discuss handset subsidies as well. But I'm sure you have better authors for me to read up and learn about this industry?
Tomi Ahonen :-)
Thank you so much, Mark
When I first read his blog almost three years ago, I had the same reaction about his "modesty." But what does that matter? The guy is seriously interested in sharing information about the huge opportunity that is mobile. And I thank him for it. It doesn't mean I think he's always right, (one should always take what one reads on the web with many grains of salt) and I've debated with him over there on his blog. But one thing you'll notice is that he'll always back things up with data (and historical facts), and he's always open to new data that will change his mind.
I am arrogant, I know that, it is what they said about me way back when I was at Nokia HQ, and it shows in how I write and speak. I'm sorry about that. I try to compensate by engaging and discussing and trying to illustrate my point(s) of view, with evidence, with statistics and with user cases. I am known for those.
I really appreciate it, Mark, that you say you've followed me for 3 years and feel I do share info to try to prove my points, and that I'm open to change my own mind. I do try to think I am still able to accept the occasional new viewpoint, even being 49 years of age (it get more difficult by the year, trust, me. Like getting to start to Twitter - I was thinking last year, do i REALLY have to learn yet another social network, is this never going to end..)
But here at Apple Insider, in this particular thread, I think I've found even more delightful and insightful discussions than typical on most forums. You guys clearly have studied the smartphone space deeply and discussed it often and been quite tolerant of opposing view points, that makes for healthy learning.
Oh, and someone asked a while back, how did I find this discussion - it was my blog of coures, I monitor where the visitors come from. Whenever I find that a given website or blog or forum sends many visitors on one day, I come over to say hello (if I can). If they make it too difficult to sign up, I give up, but like your site here allows rather easy sign-up, I wanted to try to join. Some sites have members who clearly don't enjoy that, I won't pester them, but you guys here have been very friendly, and I believe some of you have also visited the blog and left comments there (where we have also many good discussions about Forbes/Nokia/Apple/smartphones ha-ha..)
Ok, will go now, will return for more replies. Oh, and if you missed it, I have written Part 2 of the smartphones realities, what is the decisive factor to smartphone success globally. You may be surprised ha-ha..
http://communities-dominate.blogs.co...t-success.html
Tomi Ahonen :-)
Melgross in reply 155:
Does innovation really mean that every time some "feature" is added that few people use, or can even understand, in some cases, that the manufacturer has innovated?
Or does it mean that a company takes a hard look at those features, decides which ones are the most important for the largest number of customers, and attempts to implement them in a way that makes them much easier, and pleasurable to use, while working on others of lessor importance to most customers in order to get them as "right" as possible, so as to enable them in a more useful manner?
To me, the latter is what "real" innovation is. This is the Apple approach, while the former is the approach that most other companies seem to prefer.
Very good stuff. Yes, this is clearly a central theme to many of the arguments about that Forbes article, and comparing Nokia and Apple, and around the definition of what it is to innovate. At my blog someone said that Apple is the renovator. They don't really innovate, they take a system which seems to be past its peak, and they totally renovate it, which then turns that near-dead opportunity into something far greater. Look at the PC before the Mac. There is no way my parents (grandparents aged people) would ever have used a DOS based personal computer, but Windows is a copy of the Mac. Look at the Newton and how it renovated the PDA space. Look at the iPod. Sony, for gosh's sake, had abandoned the portable music player market as mature, not worth fighting for, and focused on the Playstation, but Apple came in, and totally renovated the portable music player market and made umpteen billions of revenues and profits - and sold more Macs - because of the iPod and iTunes. Now same with iPhone. They came in and took something which was fundamentally lousy, and made it easy.
That is an innovation CERTAINLY. But it is ONE innovation. Please remember, I never ever ever said in my blog that Apple is not innovative. I said Apple is innovative and is so specifically with the iPhone. But Forbes said Nokia was not. Nokia has been more innovative than Apple. It does not matter whether Nokia's innovations all have been succesfful or not, that is another issue, but you cannot accuse Nokia of a lack of innovation (but you can accuse Motorola for example for a lack of innovation in the phones space)
Tomi Ahonen :-)
It's interesting that you use the word "renovation" rather than "innovation". They are the two sides of the same coin.
It's also interesting that you think that in 1984, the computer industry was "past its peak". As someone who was involved with computers since high school in the mid '60's, I hardly could agree that by 1984 the personal computer market was past its peak. Indeed, it had just eight years of history behind it.
As for the Newton and the PDA industry, I'm a bit confused here. While there were a few truly primitive devices around when Apple introduced the Newton, one could hardly have called it an "industry". In addition, the Newton was wildly different from anything else around at the time, of for some time after.
Digital portable music players such as the early Creatives, were in a nascent industry. One that had not gotten on its feet yet. It wasn't expiring. Apple's iPod, which I don't think Jobs and company at first fully understood as being a major product at the time, was much superior to what was available. but it was a young business for everyone. iTunes them made it almost a requirement for many people.
Are you saying that the phone industry was also "past it's peak" when the iPhone was introduced?
My thoughts about Nokia's innovation is a bit different than yours, perhaps.
There is the old model, and there is the new model.
Nokia's innovations were, and still seem to be, within the space of the old model. That which I mentioned before; add more things until you burst. More buttons, more levels of menus, etc.
Apple's innovation is to make a new model. That's perhaps the most important innovation in the past ten years, since the first Palmphone.
So Nokia can continue to "innovate" within that old model space. But today, that isn't being seen as innovation at all. It's being seen as stodgy.
... and my three major blog postings before the iPhone actually was launched, were each considered the best blog of the week by my peers, ie the mobilists (and those of you who remember, I did correctly predict 10M sales, the lack of worldwide love of the 2G version, the expansion of features,
Tomi has arrived at AI, Where do we hide? Sorry Tomi... only joking. Ha-Ha.
I do feel I have to question your claims (in bold above) in your opening post.
I don't think it takes an industry expert to predict that the iPhone would receive an "expansion of features" during it's (still) short lifetime.
Similarly your criticism of 2G, particularly outside the US, was shared by many other people. The 2G iPhone was only sold in a handful of European countries, so the "the lack of worldwide love" didn't really have a chance to materialize.
My biggest problem with your post is this.
I did correctly predict 10M sales
Not quite sure what you mean by "correctly"?
You are obviously referring to your "crunching the numbers"post.
Here's what you predicted for iPhone's 1st quarter of sales.
The July-to-Sept 2007 quarter needs to achieve 383,000 iPhones sold.
I posted a comment at the time suggesting that you might have severely underestimated the consumer interest in the iPhone. Total iPhones sold, up to that point: 1.389 Million.
Remember that you based all your calculations on the first 18 months of iPhone sales. (Not the 12 months of 2008. A mistake a lot of people made)
Taking into account possible price changes, hardware changes (3G) and a staggered worldwide launch you concluded with:
I've personally gone on record already months ago, that I think Apple will reach 10 M but not much more
Apple sold 17.377 million iPhones in your 18 month timeframe.
Tomi, it was a noble effort. You looked at all the possible variations and brought your considerable industry knowledge to the subject. Your friends in mobile doubtless all agreed with you and you won the 'post of the week". However you were wrong! And wrong by quite a margin.
This was a prediction. An educated guess. There is nothing wrong... with being wrong. Just please don't turn up a couple of years later and say that you were right.
Looks like the pre iPhone days of the Samsung both my wife and daughter had.
LOL! I have used all 3 iterations of the iPhone, before my 3GS was a 16gb samsung omnia.