(...) I've never seen anyone 'touch typing' on a phone keyboard. I always see BB (et al) users looking at their keyboard when they type.
"FJ" dimples make sense when you're statically positioning your hands poised over base keys on a full keyboard. I don't see where dimples (or frankly, even a physical keyboard) makes any great difference on a thumbs-typing device.
actually all my old phones (sony k800i, nokia, even the siemens) have little dimples on the JKL key or a bracket around the JKL key
The problem is that if you are in a meeting and your wag texts you, you have to look while you type as there is no point of reference. If you have a physical keyboard it is a lot easier to text without being a distraction in a meeting.
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?)"
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 don't remember seeing people type on their phones without looking at them, though I suppose some can do that, at least some of the time.
Based on my personal observations I think this trend of eating into the Blackberry market is likely to continue. While the common wisdom is that Blackberry users are serious corporate types, the Blackberry, (especially the Bold and the Pearl), has been very popular with average consumers, especially young women, for quite a while in my area.
I work at a large University and take the train to work every day and what I see is the Blackberry devices being very, very popular amongst the younger texting crowd on the train, but these folks almost always have an iPod in their lap as well. It's a safe bet that most of these people will eventually move to a single device and given the demographics, this device is likely to be an iPhone.
IMO the portion of Blackberry's clientele that are "hard core" corporate users (basically those that have the Blackberry given to them by their workplace), will stick with it, but it's future as a consumer smartphone seems very dim indeed.
Young university types are often leading indicators of these markets and on my daily commute, it seems like the iPhone is just passing the 50% mark about now when I look about me on the train whereas even a month ago it was more like 60/40 for blackberry. This is just one tiny data point for sure, but interesting nonetheless.
One pundit said this morning that the smartphone market is about explode and soon all telco's have a good chance to pick up more sales. The % may change but the gross sales should go up for every phone maker. So BB may lose & share but gain in sales anyway.
Just saying.
In fact are they phones at all anymore ?
Or mini -tablets filled with wireless goodies and personal media data files.
I think it's a bit more than that. The Razr was bought for one reason, the thinness. It was radical at the time, and everyone wants thin (ok, except for a few old codgers here).
But beyond that, there wasn't much to like about the phone. The later models expanded on the features, but it still wasn't much special.
Smartphones are very different. Apple is expanding the usefulness of the phone in many directions. It can do much that we didn't think a phone would do at all. The app store helps to move those sales.
As long as Apple can stay ahead, they won't have a problem.
As for competing in the $50 bracket, well, not for a time.
Yeah Moto sold lots of phones until it had to compete in the $50 bucket too.
As we all know, Apple is makes lots more money on other things other than the phone itself. Which is totally different that any other phone out there. It may not turn into a bad thing for Apple if the phone is given away at some point since it is a platform which allows them to make lots of money off it and the hardware becomes a mute point.
We all know that Apples does a far better job of integrating the, hardware, the OS, applications and services, however, if the link is broken in this well formed chain the advantage could be gone. If you can get the apps and services on other plateforms and they act and perform the same way people may not care anymore.
This is the risk that is being played out here by making the hardware trivial and possible the OS as well. Right now what makes the iphone worth having, it is cool, not everyone can have one, and all the things it does beyond being a phone.
Yes, I'm currently using Typing Genius (to improve my typing accuracy, not for the Japanese emojis). There are several such apps available on the App Store, so you may want to check out some of the others before purchasing. Typing Genius has exercises for both portrait and landscape modes that focus on each hand separately and together. It also has different types of exercises (e.g., numbers, punctuation, popular words, sentences, phrases, slang, etc.). Very helpful.
Yes, I'm currently using Typing Genius (to improve my typing accuracy, not for the Japanese emojis). There are several such apps available on the App Store, so you may want to check out some of the others before purchasing. Typing Genius has exercises for both portrait and landscape modes that focus on each hand separately and together. It also has different types of exercises (e.g., numbers, punctuation, popular words, sentences, phrases, slang, etc.). Very helpful.
I don't remember seeing people type on their phones without looking at them, though I suppose some can do that, at least some of the time.
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.
Yeah, but that's just marketing talk. I can phrase the survey as --- despite RIM launches a couple of blackberries with well publicized firmware problems, their retention rate is still close to 90%.
It's not "eating" in the blackberry market when blackberries are growing faster than the iphone in eating in the smartphone market share.
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.
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.
I'm not talking about IM phrasing. I'm talking about what we're talking about needing a regular qwerty keyboard for; typing whole sentences, and even short paragraphs, hopefully without random, and significant errors.
Approximately 12% of consumers who visited a retail store this past weekend to make their iPhone 3G S purchase said they were replacing a BlackBerry handset, the latest sign that Apple continues to make headway against rival Research in Motion in the high-stakes smartphone market.
First off a poll of 256 people who could skew the results knowing RIM is Apple's competition is by no means a wide enough, blind enough or accurate enough sampling.
Quote:
Speaking to clients in a report on the matter, analyst Gene Munster said he sees this trend as a sign that Apple may no longer be able to drive the average selling prices (ASPs) of iPhones higher simply by introducing models with greater storage capacity, as the lower capacity model appears to be sufficient for most early adopters for the first time in the handset's history this year.
Oh you don't know Apple, eventually somewhere, somehow, the quality of something will go up, requiring more storage capacity than current models carry.
It's that so many new people to the iPhone seen to think that the lower capacity would be good enough for their needs, having no idea what developers and Apple will do later to push the envelope to get people to upgrade to a new iPhone.
Experienced users of Apple products know in advance and, in my humble opinion, tend to buy the higher capacity models right off to gain the most life out of their purchases.
Oh you don't know Apple, eventually somewhere, somehow, the quality of something will go up, requiring more storage capacity than current models carry.
It's that so many new people to the iPhone seen to think that the lower capacity would be good enough for their needs, having no idea what developers and Apple will do later to push the envelope to get people to upgrade to a new iPhone.
Experienced users of Apple products know in advance and, in my humble opinion, tend to buy the higher capacity models right off to gain the most life out of their purchases.
The question is how many people use their phones to store vast amounts of music and video? Those who do will always want more storage, but for those who don't, they won't.
A phone isn't like a regular computer?yet. We don't dump all of our junk there and leave it to rot.
Pre is niche product within the CDMA market... Sprint, Verizon, etc, where Apple does not have offerings. They can expand to S. Korea, India, China, Canada an even Brazil. CDMA has 20% of the global cellphone market.
CDMA being phased out since last year here in Brazil by the last carrier still supporting it. New phones are all GSM.
The problem is that if you are in a meeting and your wag texts you, you have to look while you type as there is no point of reference. If you have a physical keyboard it is a lot easier to text without being a distraction in a meeting.
Except that it's all too easy to hear the texting... it's so obnoxious when you can hear every time they push one of the keys down, especially in a meeting.
I'm not talking about IM phrasing. I'm talking about what we're talking about needing a regular qwerty keyboard for; typing whole sentences, and even short paragraphs, hopefully without random, and significant errors.
Sadly, many people, not just "kids these days," fail to type/write (whether texting, emailing or whatever) in complete, grammatically correct, sentences with proper spelling and punctuation. People's aversion to T9, or their preference for multi-tapping keys on a number pad (or maybe just their own laziness) seemed to be making the growing problem worse. The iPhone's auto-correction feature seems to help a lot though. At least, I hope it is. Honestly, the farther away from proper English it is, the more tedious, difficult (or even painful) it is to read.
The question is how many people use their phones to store vast amounts of music and video? Those who do will always want more storage, but for those who don't, they won't.
A phone isn't like a regular computer?yet. We don't dump all of our junk there and leave it to rot.
true, some of my colleagues half-full 8GBs, others have spilling-over 16GBs
Comments
(...) I've never seen anyone 'touch typing' on a phone keyboard. I always see BB (et al) users looking at their keyboard when they type.
"FJ" dimples make sense when you're statically positioning your hands poised over base keys on a full keyboard. I don't see where dimples (or frankly, even a physical keyboard) makes any great difference on a thumbs-typing device.
actually all my old phones (sony k800i, nokia, even the siemens) have little dimples on the JKL key or a bracket around the JKL key
take a look here
http://mezzo.gs/store/mm/media/catal...on-w810i-2.jpg
http://gadget7.com/wp-content/upload...kia-n96_02.jpg
http://www.photoxels.com/images/sony...phone-1024.jpg
http://compareindia.in.com/media/ima...nokia_n70m.jpg
http://ucables.com/img/ipics/SONY-ER...-UN-R99547.jpg
and i have typed a few texts without looking at the keyboard. however i think the longest one was: "in meeting, call later" :-)
i agree, software screens are the future.
maybe a protector screen with embedded wires as guides for key positions will come in handy.
-D
The problem is that if you are in a meeting and your wag texts you, you have to look while you type as there is no point of reference. If you have a physical keyboard it is a lot easier to text without being a distraction in a meeting.
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...
The problem is that from the history of the 2 previous iphones --- it's always like this:
First 3 days --- big numbers.
July-Sept quarter --- big numbers.
Oct-Dec quarter --- sales stalled (at July-Sept level) in the busy christmas quarter.
Jan-Mar quarter --- big drop off in sales.
Apr-June quarter (minus a week or week) --- "ran out of old gen iphones" and sales numbers are a decimal point.
Sure. But the question was; who is buying the phones?
Don't forget the little recession we're in as well. That Oct-Dec quarter this past year was brutal.
actually all my old phones (sony k800i, nokia, even the siemens) have little dimples on the JKL key or a bracket around the JKL key
take a look here
http://mezzo.gs/store/mm/media/catal...on-w810i-2.jpg
http://gadget7.com/wp-content/upload...kia-n96_02.jpg
http://www.photoxels.com/images/sony...phone-1024.jpg
http://compareindia.in.com/media/ima...nokia_n70m.jpg
http://ucables.com/img/ipics/SONY-ER...-UN-R99547.jpg
and i have typed a few texts without looking at the keyboard. however i think the longest one was: "in meeting, call later" :-)
i agree, software screens are the future.
maybe a protector screen with embedded wires as guides for key positions will come in handy.
-D
My old Treo 700p also has a dimple on a key, but it's the "k" key. I still couldn't type for beans on it.
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 don't remember seeing people type on their phones without looking at them, though I suppose some can do that, at least some of the time.
Based on my personal observations I think this trend of eating into the Blackberry market is likely to continue. While the common wisdom is that Blackberry users are serious corporate types, the Blackberry, (especially the Bold and the Pearl), has been very popular with average consumers, especially young women, for quite a while in my area.
I work at a large University and take the train to work every day and what I see is the Blackberry devices being very, very popular amongst the younger texting crowd on the train, but these folks almost always have an iPod in their lap as well. It's a safe bet that most of these people will eventually move to a single device and given the demographics, this device is likely to be an iPhone.
IMO the portion of Blackberry's clientele that are "hard core" corporate users (basically those that have the Blackberry given to them by their workplace), will stick with it, but it's future as a consumer smartphone seems very dim indeed.
Young university types are often leading indicators of these markets and on my daily commute, it seems like the iPhone is just passing the 50% mark about now when I look about me on the train whereas even a month ago it was more like 60/40 for blackberry. This is just one tiny data point for sure, but interesting nonetheless.
One pundit said this morning that the smartphone market is about explode and soon all telco's have a good chance to pick up more sales. The % may change but the gross sales should go up for every phone maker. So BB may lose & share but gain in sales anyway.
Just saying.
In fact are they phones at all anymore ?
Or mini -tablets filled with wireless goodies and personal media data files.
9
I think it's a bit more than that. The Razr was bought for one reason, the thinness. It was radical at the time, and everyone wants thin (ok, except for a few old codgers here).
But beyond that, there wasn't much to like about the phone. The later models expanded on the features, but it still wasn't much special.
Smartphones are very different. Apple is expanding the usefulness of the phone in many directions. It can do much that we didn't think a phone would do at all. The app store helps to move those sales.
As long as Apple can stay ahead, they won't have a problem.
As for competing in the $50 bracket, well, not for a time.
I agree with Tim here:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2348658,00.asp
Yeah Moto sold lots of phones until it had to compete in the $50 bucket too.
As we all know, Apple is makes lots more money on other things other than the phone itself. Which is totally different that any other phone out there. It may not turn into a bad thing for Apple if the phone is given away at some point since it is a platform which allows them to make lots of money off it and the hardware becomes a mute point.
We all know that Apples does a far better job of integrating the, hardware, the OS, applications and services, however, if the link is broken in this well formed chain the advantage could be gone. If you can get the apps and services on other plateforms and they act and perform the same way people may not care anymore.
This is the risk that is being played out here by making the hardware trivial and possible the OS as well. Right now what makes the iphone worth having, it is cool, not everyone can have one, and all the things it does beyond being a phone.
Is there a typing genius app for the iphone?
Yes, I'm currently using Typing Genius (to improve my typing accuracy, not for the Japanese emojis). There are several such apps available on the App Store, so you may want to check out some of the others before purchasing. Typing Genius has exercises for both portrait and landscape modes that focus on each hand separately and together. It also has different types of exercises (e.g., numbers, punctuation, popular words, sentences, phrases, slang, etc.). Very helpful.
Yes, I'm currently using Typing Genius (to improve my typing accuracy, not for the Japanese emojis). There are several such apps available on the App Store, so you may want to check out some of the others before purchasing. Typing Genius has exercises for both portrait and landscape modes that focus on each hand separately and together. It also has different types of exercises (e.g., numbers, punctuation, popular words, sentences, phrases, slang, etc.). Very helpful.
thanks!
-D
I don't remember seeing people type on their phones without looking at them, though I suppose some can do that, at least some of the time.
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.
Yeah, but that's just marketing talk. I can phrase the survey as --- despite RIM launches a couple of blackberries with well publicized firmware problems, their retention rate is still close to 90%.
It's not "eating" in the blackberry market when blackberries are growing faster than the iphone in eating in the smartphone market share.
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.
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.
I'm not talking about IM phrasing. I'm talking about what we're talking about needing a regular qwerty keyboard for; typing whole sentences, and even short paragraphs, hopefully without random, and significant errors.
Approximately 12% of consumers who visited a retail store this past weekend to make their iPhone 3G S purchase said they were replacing a BlackBerry handset, the latest sign that Apple continues to make headway against rival Research in Motion in the high-stakes smartphone market.
First off a poll of 256 people who could skew the results knowing RIM is Apple's competition is by no means a wide enough, blind enough or accurate enough sampling.
Speaking to clients in a report on the matter, analyst Gene Munster said he sees this trend as a sign that Apple may no longer be able to drive the average selling prices (ASPs) of iPhones higher simply by introducing models with greater storage capacity, as the lower capacity model appears to be sufficient for most early adopters for the first time in the handset's history this year.
Oh you don't know Apple, eventually somewhere, somehow, the quality of something will go up, requiring more storage capacity than current models carry.
It's that so many new people to the iPhone seen to think that the lower capacity would be good enough for their needs, having no idea what developers and Apple will do later to push the envelope to get people to upgrade to a new iPhone.
Experienced users of Apple products know in advance and, in my humble opinion, tend to buy the higher capacity models right off to gain the most life out of their purchases.
maybe a protector screen with embedded wires as guides for key positions will come in handy.
-D[/QUOTE]
Pantent that
Oh you don't know Apple, eventually somewhere, somehow, the quality of something will go up, requiring more storage capacity than current models carry.
It's that so many new people to the iPhone seen to think that the lower capacity would be good enough for their needs, having no idea what developers and Apple will do later to push the envelope to get people to upgrade to a new iPhone.
Experienced users of Apple products know in advance and, in my humble opinion, tend to buy the higher capacity models right off to gain the most life out of their purchases.
The question is how many people use their phones to store vast amounts of music and video? Those who do will always want more storage, but for those who don't, they won't.
A phone isn't like a regular computer?yet. We don't dump all of our junk there and leave it to rot.
Pre is niche product within the CDMA market... Sprint, Verizon, etc, where Apple does not have offerings. They can expand to S. Korea, India, China, Canada an even Brazil. CDMA has 20% of the global cellphone market.
CDMA being phased out since last year here in Brazil by the last carrier still supporting it. New phones are all GSM.
The problem is that if you are in a meeting and your wag texts you, you have to look while you type as there is no point of reference. If you have a physical keyboard it is a lot easier to text without being a distraction in a meeting.
Except that it's all too easy to hear the texting... it's so obnoxious when you can hear every time they push one of the keys down, especially in a meeting.
I'm not talking about IM phrasing. I'm talking about what we're talking about needing a regular qwerty keyboard for; typing whole sentences, and even short paragraphs, hopefully without random, and significant errors.
Sadly, many people, not just "kids these days," fail to type/write (whether texting, emailing or whatever) in complete, grammatically correct, sentences with proper spelling and punctuation.
The question is how many people use their phones to store vast amounts of music and video? Those who do will always want more storage, but for those who don't, they won't.
A phone isn't like a regular computer?yet. We don't dump all of our junk there and leave it to rot.
true, some of my colleagues half-full 8GBs, others have spilling-over 16GBs
my 16GB has never been fuller than 30%