Although Nokia is in a slide, it still has 30%+ share. Let's not even consider Nokia. They don't even have much of a US presence. Nokia sells a lot of cheap devices, and cheap and plentiful tend to MOVE. So that's Nokia.
Let's give the crown to RIM, if only the US crown.
The iPhone is within about 3% of RIM, achieved in only two years, with one device (counting the 3G), and demand is only increasing (with what is guaranteed to be a successful "4G" iPhone in the works), with RIM having absolutely nothing to show in the way of capability, content, UI, that the iPhone has, and with business beginning to take a more serious look at the iPhone.
There is only ONE real growth prospect here . . . and it doesn't include 7 more versions of the same Bold/Pearl we've seen for the past two years.
Dude why be such a fan boy? Address, don't dismiss. You don't dismiss the current market leader even if it is declining. You complaing that Blackberry basically does yearly updates to the Bold and Pearl yet what does Apple do with the iPhone?
Couldn't it be about more than just UI considering that RIM has oh... security, multitasking decent enough software development, has quickly filled the holes in their overall model (app store, 5.0 software, dev conference shows them adding API's for perceived problems, etc.)
If we want to be helpful to Apple, you have to view reality and reality says that Apple had easy growth because there was every market to go into and grab some sales. There really aren't anymore new and easy markets to plow into. Think about how easy it is for RIM to stay ahead when they can just design more than one handset and can sit all alone with no Apple when addressing the 89 million customers at Verizon for example.
Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox
Yeah, but that's the problem, isn't it? Outside of "What Apple did plus 'features' plus lower cost'", where is the innovation in the tech industry that will bring us this new device that rethinks the fundamentals?
It's been more than two years since the iPhone debuted, and every credible competitor to date has simply been variations on that theme, along with trumpeted bullet points like higher mega-pixel cameras with flash or removable batteries or higher res screens, etc.
Because that's how the tech industry works, largely. They don't do fundamental innovation, they do gimmicks and specs as added value, in an effort to eke out some mind share.
Fundamental innovation means vision, big picture thinking, and a long range plan that doesn't include letting your marketing and engineering departments call the shots. It means asking "what are people wanting to do, and what is the best, most satisfying way for them to do that?" before you ask "can we make the animation between screens look cooler for the ads?" or "can we make some spec have a higher number to beat the competition with?"
I honestly don't see a lot of big picture thinking in the tech industry at large, and it sucks because that would mean more better products and fewer absolutely inexcusable, borderline unusable pieces of crap, flash in the pan dead ends, and "awesome" products that nobody in their right mind would bother to figure out how to use.
Apple is the R&D outfit for the industry by default, not because they're good or noble or likable, but because they have a singular maniac at the helm that asks the right questions, and demands the right answers. Sony used to have some of that, but they got too unfocused and apparently lost the ability to say no to the engineers. Red, the digital camera people, have it in spades, but in an extremely narrow niche market. Interestingly, they also have a singular maniac at the helm.
For better or worse, that makes it unlikely that anyone else with the deep pockets to fund the kind of major rollout necessary to compete with the iPhone is going to do anything more than doodle in Apple's margins. Not to say that they won't have a lot of success with that, there's a lot of reasons for preferring a pretty good copy over the original if the copiers are clever and keep an eye on the bottom line. But they're not going to be a startling rethink of the possibilities, because the people who should be making such products simply aren't designed to take that kind of risk.
Apple's vision has faltered and had to have been altered considerably. They wanted a model where the cell company had nothing to do with the phone. That hasn't happened. They bowed down and added sms/mms. Apple has "innovated" along the very lines you dismiss, better radio chips, better battery, screen coating, high mp camera. All Apple has lucked into was realizing that consumers would spend as much on a smartphone as business would. Apple realized there were loads of prosumers in the cell market and since that is the domain of their computers, they probably had a leg up in figuring it out. However Apple hasn't had much luck growing past that point in computers. The competitors are still moving very good numbers and most are filling those holes quickly if they haven't already. The Apple "eco-system" has already been duplicated by RIM pretty well, and while Android is still a bit behind, I really would worry because Google isn't exactly known for sitting still.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ifail
I swear i always seem to see the same arguments, Apple is crushing RIM and Nintendo, yet no one can seem to be logical in any discussion regarding this.
RIM has just unveiled Flash and OpenGL (please note, as a Blackberry Bold user im pretty fucking irate at RIM right now, only the Storm 2 and Curve 8530 (both CDMA VZW devices) are "capable" of running OpenGL atm) and i have to say after looking at the videos, the gap between the iphone is coming to a close and fast. New ways to customize the devices and theme builders as well as better dev tools (finally...) mean Blackberry apps wont look so archaic anymore. With the new Webkit browser comes better rendering of HTML emails as well, so RIM has shut down many selling points of the iphone now. BES blows everything out the water, so unless your a small company or security and convenience dont matter to you then the iphone works for you in enterprise (assuming every employee you have has AT&T)!
The only thing the iphone will have going for it is, 100k apps (of which 95%+ suck) and iTunes (which BB are capable of syncing with already).
Right now the iPhones features over competitors are dying and fast and they are still living off the hype (like the Wii was), unless the 4G pulls out some serious new features i can see people passing on the next iteration just like quite a few people i know have done for the 3GS
When you go to some places that are not exclusively about Apple, I see many of the points you have mentioned. I also just find it odd that people will treat the iPhone as a platform but no competitor will be treated that way. Thus people will see Droid sell 100,000 phones and treat that in isolation instead of wanting to add how many phones HTC Droid Eris sold, the MyTouch, etc. Hell they won't even lump Milestone and Droid numbers together. I really love Apple products but I'm not going to ignore reality either.
Come on Samab. Looking at the current enthusiasm for the Droid. What evidence is there that people would be enthusiastic about Droid 2?
It doesn't matter if Apple ran out of the original iPhone. These numbers show there was extreme demand for sales of the newest model to grow by such a large percentage.
Quote:
Originally Posted by samab
It can happen very easily --- Verizon/Motorola just have to mismanage their next generation Droid rollout, causing Verizon to run out their original Droid phone inventory in a quarter sometime next year --- right before they introduce the next generation of Droid phones.
That 600% increase was an Apple mistake --- they "ran out" of previous generation of iphone for 2 months until the new generation of iphone was launched.
Come on Samab. Looking at the current enthusiasm for the Droid. What evidence is there that people would be enthusiastic about Droid 2?
It doesn't matter if Apple ran out of the original iPhone. These numbers show there was extreme demand for sales of the newest model to grow by such a large percentage.
No, the 600% increase is an artificial percentage. And artificially Verizon/Motorola can produce the same numbers --- Motorola is known to be a basketcase and very likely to mess up the next gen Droid launch.
Without such artificial growth rate, Apple still grows faster than RIM. I don't know why Apple fanbois have to rely on artificial growth rate to win an argument.
Please enlighten us about what was artificial about the growth rate?
Quote:
Originally Posted by samab
No, the 600% increase is an artificial percentage. And artificially Verizon/Motorola can produce the same numbers --- Motorola is known to be a basketcase and very likely to mess up the next gen Droid launch.
Without such artificial growth rate, Apple still grows faster than RIM. I don't know why Apple fanbois have to rely on artificial growth rate to win an argument.
Please enlighten us about what was artificial about the growth rate?
If you use the March 2008 quarter sales number (instead of the June 2008 quarter) and compare it with June 2009 quarter, the growth would have been much lower.
It would still grow at a very fast fast rate --- 1.7 million to 5.2 million.
Somehow, for a Apple fanboi --- a normalized 300% growth rate is not enough, they have to rely of artificial shortage of iphone to make it look like it really grew at 600%.
Comments
Hehe . . .
Let's put it in perspective for a moment.
Although Nokia is in a slide, it still has 30%+ share. Let's not even consider Nokia. They don't even have much of a US presence. Nokia sells a lot of cheap devices, and cheap and plentiful tend to MOVE. So that's Nokia.
Let's give the crown to RIM, if only the US crown.
The iPhone is within about 3% of RIM, achieved in only two years, with one device (counting the 3G), and demand is only increasing (with what is guaranteed to be a successful "4G" iPhone in the works), with RIM having absolutely nothing to show in the way of capability, content, UI, that the iPhone has, and with business beginning to take a more serious look at the iPhone.
There is only ONE real growth prospect here . . . and it doesn't include 7 more versions of the same Bold/Pearl we've seen for the past two years.
Dude why be such a fan boy? Address, don't dismiss. You don't dismiss the current market leader even if it is declining. You complaing that Blackberry basically does yearly updates to the Bold and Pearl yet what does Apple do with the iPhone?
Couldn't it be about more than just UI considering that RIM has oh... security, multitasking decent enough software development, has quickly filled the holes in their overall model (app store, 5.0 software, dev conference shows them adding API's for perceived problems, etc.)
If we want to be helpful to Apple, you have to view reality and reality says that Apple had easy growth because there was every market to go into and grab some sales. There really aren't anymore new and easy markets to plow into. Think about how easy it is for RIM to stay ahead when they can just design more than one handset and can sit all alone with no Apple when addressing the 89 million customers at Verizon for example.
Yeah, but that's the problem, isn't it? Outside of "What Apple did plus 'features' plus lower cost'", where is the innovation in the tech industry that will bring us this new device that rethinks the fundamentals?
It's been more than two years since the iPhone debuted, and every credible competitor to date has simply been variations on that theme, along with trumpeted bullet points like higher mega-pixel cameras with flash or removable batteries or higher res screens, etc.
Because that's how the tech industry works, largely. They don't do fundamental innovation, they do gimmicks and specs as added value, in an effort to eke out some mind share.
Fundamental innovation means vision, big picture thinking, and a long range plan that doesn't include letting your marketing and engineering departments call the shots. It means asking "what are people wanting to do, and what is the best, most satisfying way for them to do that?" before you ask "can we make the animation between screens look cooler for the ads?" or "can we make some spec have a higher number to beat the competition with?"
I honestly don't see a lot of big picture thinking in the tech industry at large, and it sucks because that would mean more better products and fewer absolutely inexcusable, borderline unusable pieces of crap, flash in the pan dead ends, and "awesome" products that nobody in their right mind would bother to figure out how to use.
Apple is the R&D outfit for the industry by default, not because they're good or noble or likable, but because they have a singular maniac at the helm that asks the right questions, and demands the right answers. Sony used to have some of that, but they got too unfocused and apparently lost the ability to say no to the engineers. Red, the digital camera people, have it in spades, but in an extremely narrow niche market. Interestingly, they also have a singular maniac at the helm.
For better or worse, that makes it unlikely that anyone else with the deep pockets to fund the kind of major rollout necessary to compete with the iPhone is going to do anything more than doodle in Apple's margins. Not to say that they won't have a lot of success with that, there's a lot of reasons for preferring a pretty good copy over the original if the copiers are clever and keep an eye on the bottom line. But they're not going to be a startling rethink of the possibilities, because the people who should be making such products simply aren't designed to take that kind of risk.
Apple's vision has faltered and had to have been altered considerably. They wanted a model where the cell company had nothing to do with the phone. That hasn't happened. They bowed down and added sms/mms. Apple has "innovated" along the very lines you dismiss, better radio chips, better battery, screen coating, high mp camera. All Apple has lucked into was realizing that consumers would spend as much on a smartphone as business would. Apple realized there were loads of prosumers in the cell market and since that is the domain of their computers, they probably had a leg up in figuring it out. However Apple hasn't had much luck growing past that point in computers. The competitors are still moving very good numbers and most are filling those holes quickly if they haven't already. The Apple "eco-system" has already been duplicated by RIM pretty well, and while Android is still a bit behind, I really would worry because Google isn't exactly known for sitting still.
I swear i always seem to see the same arguments, Apple is crushing RIM and Nintendo, yet no one can seem to be logical in any discussion regarding this.
RIM has just unveiled Flash and OpenGL (please note, as a Blackberry Bold user im pretty fucking irate at RIM right now, only the Storm 2 and Curve 8530 (both CDMA VZW devices) are "capable" of running OpenGL atm) and i have to say after looking at the videos, the gap between the iphone is coming to a close and fast. New ways to customize the devices and theme builders as well as better dev tools (finally...) mean Blackberry apps wont look so archaic anymore. With the new Webkit browser comes better rendering of HTML emails as well, so RIM has shut down many selling points of the iphone now. BES blows everything out the water, so unless your a small company or security and convenience dont matter to you then the iphone works for you in enterprise (assuming every employee you have has AT&T)!
The only thing the iphone will have going for it is, 100k apps (of which 95%+ suck) and iTunes (which BB are capable of syncing with already).
Right now the iPhones features over competitors are dying and fast and they are still living off the hype (like the Wii was), unless the 4G pulls out some serious new features i can see people passing on the next iteration just like quite a few people i know have done for the 3GS
When you go to some places that are not exclusively about Apple, I see many of the points you have mentioned. I also just find it odd that people will treat the iPhone as a platform but no competitor will be treated that way. Thus people will see Droid sell 100,000 phones and treat that in isolation instead of wanting to add how many phones HTC Droid Eris sold, the MyTouch, etc. Hell they won't even lump Milestone and Droid numbers together. I really love Apple products but I'm not going to ignore reality either.
It doesn't matter if Apple ran out of the original iPhone. These numbers show there was extreme demand for sales of the newest model to grow by such a large percentage.
It can happen very easily --- Verizon/Motorola just have to mismanage their next generation Droid rollout, causing Verizon to run out their original Droid phone inventory in a quarter sometime next year --- right before they introduce the next generation of Droid phones.
That 600% increase was an Apple mistake --- they "ran out" of previous generation of iphone for 2 months until the new generation of iphone was launched.
Come on Samab. Looking at the current enthusiasm for the Droid. What evidence is there that people would be enthusiastic about Droid 2?
It doesn't matter if Apple ran out of the original iPhone. These numbers show there was extreme demand for sales of the newest model to grow by such a large percentage.
No, the 600% increase is an artificial percentage. And artificially Verizon/Motorola can produce the same numbers --- Motorola is known to be a basketcase and very likely to mess up the next gen Droid launch.
Without such artificial growth rate, Apple still grows faster than RIM. I don't know why Apple fanbois have to rely on artificial growth rate to win an argument.
No, the 600% increase is an artificial percentage. And artificially Verizon/Motorola can produce the same numbers --- Motorola is known to be a basketcase and very likely to mess up the next gen Droid launch.
Without such artificial growth rate, Apple still grows faster than RIM. I don't know why Apple fanbois have to rely on artificial growth rate to win an argument.
Please enlighten us about what was artificial about the growth rate?
If you use the March 2008 quarter sales number (instead of the June 2008 quarter) and compare it with June 2009 quarter, the growth would have been much lower.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IP...er_quarter.svg
It would still grow at a very fast fast rate --- 1.7 million to 5.2 million.
Somehow, for a Apple fanboi --- a normalized 300% growth rate is not enough, they have to rely of artificial shortage of iphone to make it look like it really grew at 600%.