TouchWiz is a UI in its own right. It just so happens that it can also be applied to WinMo and Symbian devices, but there are devices out there that are TouchWiz only.
It's difficult to find much information about TouchWiz. Every phone I can find it runs ontop of another OS. It doesn't seem to be any thing revolutionary.
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Frankly, how Apple, or any other manufacturer, got to their touchscreen end result is completely irrelevent here since we're talking about iPhone market share, not how to make a touchscreen based mobile phone.
I'm responding to your assertion that all phones should be lumped together because most phones are gaining 90% of the iPhone's functions. This isn't entirely accurate.
It's true many featured phones are gaining touchscreens with a grid of icons that launch apps. They are also gaining extended functionality of dedicated youtube, Facebook, or Skype. Outside of that you cannot do or add anything else. This is not 90% of the iPhone's functionality. If you think so, then you don't fully understand smartphones, or the purpose of their platforms.
...in your opinion. Regardless, they offer similar features to the iPhone, yet aren't considered smartphones. As such, the iPhone needs to be compared against ALL phones, or the smartphone category needs to be expanded enormously to cover all of these other devices.
Yes, of course it's my opinion. My comment that "they suck" was directed at the OS and UI. I had a Razr before the iPhone, and the interface was absolutely awful, even though it was able to do a lot of the things the iPhone can do. The iPhone's interface is far better and easier to use...in my opinion.
It's difficult to find much information about TouchWiz. Every phone I can find it runs ontop of another OS. It doesn't seem to be any thing revolutionary.
I'm responding to your assertion that all phones should be lumped together because most phones are gaining 90% of the iPhone's functions. This isn't entirely accurate.
It's true many featured phones are gaining touchscreens with a grid of icons that launch apps. They are also gaining extended functionality of dedicated youtube, Facebook, or Skype. Outside of that you cannot do or add anything else. This is not 90% of the iPhone's functionality. If you think so, then you don't fully understand smartphones, or the purpose of their platforms.
Samsung Impression, S5230, S5600, S8300, A867 Eternity, T919 Behold, M8800 Pixon, F480, are just some of the TouchWiz phones.
Please, you cannot use the fact that these phones don't have the ability to install additional applications as a reason for them not being smartphones. Are you conveniently forgetting that the original iPhone didn't have this ability until 2.0, yet that was still trumpetted as a smartphone? The ability to add applications is NOT a requirement to be classified as a smartphone, which was a standard set by Apple themselves.
Samsung Impression, S5230, S5600, S8300, A867 Eternity, T919 Behold, M8800 Pixon, F480, are just some of the TouchWiz phones.
Please, you cannot use the fact that these phones don't have the ability to install additional applications as a reason for them not being smartphones. Are you conveniently forgetting that the original iPhone didn't have this ability until 2.0, yet that was still trumpetted as a smartphone? The ability to add applications is NOT a requirement to be classified as a smartphone, which was a standard set by Apple themselves.
Also I'm sure all of them do have apps, just not apps that come through a store run by the creator of the phone or apps with the degree of polish that some iPhone apps have.
My Razr (since everyone is noting their older phone) has a Hearts/Poker game I downloaded onto it. It came with Pac Man and Tetris. There are hundreds of games and apps available both for it and my new phone as well. The reality though is that I spend 90% of the time on it or my new phone doing texting, taking pictures or video, calling, using GPS, etc.
Smartphone = workstation. The fastest workstation from five years ago wouldn't even be a netbook today.
I don't think that "smartphone" is a classification that will even be around before too long.
It was never anything more than a marketing category, the definition of which changed depending on who was doing the selling.
Again, we are seeing the emergence of truly portable computers which use the cellphone networks to achieve ubiquitous connectivity, which in turn engenders some new kinds of applications that are predicated on the assumption that you will have this computer on your person at all times and this computer always knows where it is and can always talk to a network-- which knows a bunch more stuff like where similar computers are and what the local terrain looks like and what your bigger computer back home is doing, etc.
As all of this gets more sophisticated and more processor intensive and just generally looking like the usual software/hardware advancement two-step that characterizes, you know, computers, it's going to get harder and harder to pretend like there is some kind of evolutionary process that turns "phones" into "computers", or that there is a continuum of hardware that makes it difficult to tell one from the other.
There are too many cultural trends driving the adoption of a pocketable, ubiquitously connected computer as a standard bit of industrialized world kit, to imagine that "phones" even have much of a future. Today's iPhone (or something with its capacities) is tomorrow's free "basic" phone, and our pocketable computers will become more powerful than our current desktops-- I think we can all agree that that's simply inevitable.
Phones with some functionality bolted on will be (and are quickly becoming) no more desirable than Palm's abortive Portfolio-- because there's no point in crippling a device it's not going to cost much less or be any more convenient.
I wasn't even talking about that and consider it to be a smart phone. Also no one is saying it has to beat the iPhone. It just has to be good enough, not the best.
That pretty much is the aim of free/ low cost phones is to just be good enough, and they ready dominate much of the phone market in that state.
The iPhone fills a small niche that does want the best, it will never compete with the low cost good enough phones on their own terms
This already is possible. You can buy just about any GSM phone you choose and purchase a SIM card with no contract.
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You note the very trend yourself but fail to run the trend to the conclusion. When the market is mature and the cannibalization begins the prices begin to fall and add-ons become standard features in order to survive.
As the lower end phones adopt features of todays high end phones. The high end phones will continue to advance with better hardware and more sophisticated software, they will never reach and equilibrium.
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Well we are looking into the future and discussing trends. It is clear that major carriers have had to respond to these regional providers and the consumer benefits. We have past examples in the same or similar markets. All these need to do is peal off a sliver and the majors freak out.
All carriers have to do to meet this is offer a cheaper phone with a cheaper monthly plan. This is little impact on it's premium phones and services.
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Of course not. I'm speculating about the future on a rumor forum. What the hell do you expect?
Speculation still has to be grounded in the reality of what's going on.
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Motorola stopped innovating. They are badly managed. Folks like myself do not want that to happen to Apple. The choice really isn't about whether to commoditize or not. If you don't someone else will. The choice is to commoditize on your own terms or have them dictated to you. I hope Apple does the former and not the latter.
It's true Motorola stopped innovating. But when the Razr was offered for little or nothing at generic mobile retailers that totally killed the Razr as a premium brand. Brand perception is extremely important and Apple is a pro at this.
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They absolutely change them in the long run which is why they go out of business. I'm not saying that Boostmobile will thrive, quite the opposite. I'm saying they will slice off some market share and the majors will respond to grab it back. That response keeps the major players as major and kills the small guys but leads to cheaper rates. I have no doubt that we see $50 all inclusive plans in a couple years from the majors. We already have $99 unlimited calling minute plans that weren't imaginable just a few years ago.
No they won't, people who use Boost Mobile or Metro PCS are not in the market for iPhone's or BlackBerry's, so it's not a lost sale.
Until TouchWiz begins to gain some significant market share or even mind share I cannot see it as a significant competitor in the smartphone biz.
The difference is building a long term platform vs building a simple one time use OS. The OS on most feature phones are not built to be robust long term platforms. Feature phones don't have to deal with external developer kits and supporting system API's. Feature phone OS rarely receive updates. To gain added functionality you generally have to purchase a new phone.
A long term platform like iPhone or Blackberry has to be built from it's foundation for the next 10 years. The OS has to be flexible enough to change and grow and compete. Feature phone OS does not exist with these pressures.
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Originally Posted by mrochester
Samsung Impression, S5230, S5600, S8300, A867 Eternity, T919 Behold, M8800 Pixon, F480, are just some of the TouchWiz phones.
Please, you cannot use the fact that these phones don't have the ability to install additional applications as a reason for them not being smartphones. Are you conveniently forgetting that the original iPhone didn't have this ability until 2.0, yet that was still trumpetted as a smartphone? The ability to add applications is NOT a requirement to be classified as a smartphone, which was a standard set by Apple themselves.
I agree, their really is no hard definition of "smartphone" for consumers the line is already blurring. Todays smartphone should much more be considered ultra mobile PC's subsidized by mobile carriers.
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Originally Posted by addabox
I don't think that "smartphone" is a classification that will even be around before too long.
It was never anything more than a marketing category, the definition of which changed depending on who was doing the selling.
Again, we are seeing the emergence of truly portable computers which use the cellphone networks to achieve ubiquitous connectivity,
I agree, their really is no hard definition of "smartphone" for consumers the line is already blurring. Todays smartphone should much more be considered ultra mobile PC's subsidized by mobile carriers.
You know, I think it's that "subsidy" part that really seems to fog people's minds. Like a bit of money makes a "smartphone" an extension of the carrier, so that anything else the carrier is offering is manifestly "the same."
Now, there's a bit of truth to that, in that say, a Verizon is bound and determined to make everything they sell be "Verizonified."
But, that, of course, is why Apple went with AT&T, and now the relationship they forged there is becoming more the norm. Carriers are realizing they do better to step out of the way and let real computer companies build the hardware they want and have it operate the way they want, with the carrier serving as ISP.
Hopefully this trend will continue, but even if it doesn't the distinction between computers and phones will get ever clearer.
Once upon a time, not everyone needed a cell phone. But technology has a way of making "bells and whistles" into "obvious and normal."
And then the culture changes in ways that reinforce the expectation that average people have that technology available to them, just like the culture assumes you have an email address and internet access.
Not everybody has those things, obviously, and those things come later if at all to impoverished nations, but if you apply for a job and tell them that you just don't "do" email or have no way of getting on line, your potential employer is going to consider you an "oddball" or possibly a Luddite of some sort.
How long did that take? For a recently voluntary technology to become a de facto requirement for living in an industrialized society?
And while there are still plenty of people who don't have cell phones, they tend to be older and every fewer. Not being able to reach someone whenever is fast becoming quaint.
So how long, I wonder, will it take for the kinds of things having a small computer on ones person most of the time enables to become the norm and the expectation?
I'm not saying any of these things are "good", just that it's how it seems to work. The hardware gets cheaper. It gets so cheap, it's pointless not to include it. Small computers become the free phones. And society plans accordingly.
Once upon a time, not everyone needed a cell phone. But technology has a way of making "bells and whistles" into "obvious and normal."
Please note, not everything technology offers is readily adopted. I already wrote "business cases", i.e. what customers are used to, don't change that rapidly, "if at all".
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Originally Posted by addabox
if you apply for a job and tell them that you just don't "do" email or have no way of getting on line, your potential employer is going to consider you an "oddball" or possibly a Luddite of some sort.
Please trust, they will forgive me those singularities, having my CV before eyes. Not much to discuss.
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Originally Posted by addabox
So how long, I wonder, will it take for the kinds of things having a small computer on ones person most of the time enables to become the norm and the expectation?
One more generation lifespan, I dare say. It's pointless to apply prospections to collected modern statistics.
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Originally Posted by addabox
The hardware gets cheaper. It gets so cheap, it's pointless not to include it. Small computers become the free phones. And society plans accordingly.
It's not hardware price which scares people. It's carriers' business models (contract prices).
I agree, their really is no hard definition of "smartphone" for consumers the line is already blurring. Todays smartphone should much more be considered ultra mobile PC's subsidized by mobile carriers.
I think a smartphone should have at least the following capabilities:
Please note, not everything technology offers is readily adopted. I already wrote "business cases", i.e. what customers are used to, don't change that rapidly, "if at all".
True, not every technological change gets readily adopted. However, some get not just adopted but woven into the fabric of day to day life, and so quickly we quickly forget what life was like without them.
Commonplace reliance on cell phones, answering machines or services, home video formats, etc. all changed the cultural landscape, and did so pretty quickly. And, of course, the great sea change of our time, the internet, continues to spawn ever further permutations that start out as novelties and quickly become part of our shared idea of "normal."
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Please trust, they will forgive me those singularities, having my CV before eyes. Not much to discuss.
It's not about singularities, like sporting unusual facial hair, though. It's about minimal requirements for the job. Not having an email address is fast approaching not having a phone, say, in terms of what it says about you. Like, "Hi, I'm the Unibomber living in a shack in the woods, and I'd like a job."
Like I say, not endorsing these attitudes, but you'll have to admit that society has ideas about a certain threshold of "connectedness" below which a person seems more than odd, they seem crazy.
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One more generation lifespan, I dare say. It's pointless to apply prospections to collected modern statistics.
Impossible to say for sure, of course, but it's just one of those things that strikes me as inevitable, as it carries forward the relentless penetration of computers and connectedness into our everyday lives. It's the electricity of our era; not the sort of thing you'd want to bet against.
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It's not hardware price which scares people. It's carriers' business models (contract prices).
Very true, but that will either change, or folks will start to regard those costs as just another inevitable price of "doing business" (by which I mean conducting ones life) in the 21st century-- just as once rare and expensive broadband costs, or cable costs, have gradually come to be the norm.
It was just a very sort while ago, after all, that any kind of "cellphone plan" was an extravagance, best left to movers and shakers in big cities.
It makes sense to compare the iPhone market share with all the other phones because:
Any statistic is only usefull if it helps making conclusions and determining trends. This one definitely is. When we have the numbers next year, and the year after that it will make a LOT of sense. It is not like the Zune representing N% of the 30GB hard-drive based MP3 players. I would say reporting the netbooks and notebooks as a total number under the same category makes less sense because it does not help to see the trends.
Most objections against the 1.5% market share assume that this percent is low and presents the iPhone unfavorably compared to the dumbphones. Neither is true.
Carriers are still the most important player in the mobile market. Not sure about US, but the vast majority of the iPhone sales overseas is made by mobile operators. In many countries there is no Apple advertisement, carriers only. The state with the talks with China and reports on the situation in India and Russia suggests that not all carriers are dying to sell iPhone.
There was an expectation that Apple will redefine the relations between the mobile operators and the device manufacturers. Apple showcased the Visual Voicemail, and we expected that there will be future signs of cooperation. Two years after the launch, I would say the following:
Apple did make an impact on operator-manufacturer relations in the US, but using the word "redefined" is far stretched.
Nobody cares about Visual Voicemail. Better give us the features other phones had 8 years ago, like sending a contact via SMS/MMS, group ringtone or settings combined in custom profiles.
Apple puts restrictions requested by the mobile operators and Apple takes the fire for this.
Many believe, me including, that Apple loses more on exclusive deals outside US than it gains. US is a bit different, but that is changing too.
Apple's position on the mobile market is very strong, but it is not an "Apple rules" position. Apple has a huge potential for the future but it still needs to turn the potential into reality.
Who was spinning anything negative out of it? Jeez, without even saying anything negative, and simply saying something that isn't the 'accepted norm' around here, you get accused of being negative. Stop being so over protective, it's a company who are after your money plain and simple, not your friend!
It was negative when you descibed it as "Still Just" 1.5%. A more neutral title would have been: "iPhone 1.5% of Mobile Market" and allow the reader to determine if it is "still only" or "just" as opposed to "rapidly achieved" or whatever adjectives they wished to apply to the factoid.
It was negative when you descibed it as "Still Just" 1.5%. A more neutral title would have been: "iPhone 1.5% of Mobile Market" and allow the reader to determine if it is "still only" or "just" as opposed to "rapidly achieved" or whatever adjectives they wished to apply to the factoid.
Please point me to where I said that. I think you'll have an awfully hard time.
Commonplace reliance on cell phones, answering machines or services, home video formats, etc. all changed the cultural landscape, and did so pretty quickly. And, of course, the great sea change of our time, the internet, continues to spawn ever further permutations that start out as novelties and quickly become part of our shared idea of "normal."
Impossible to say for sure, of course, but it's just one of those things that strikes me as inevitable, as it carries forward the relentless penetration of computers and connectedness into our everyday lives. It's the electricity of our era; not the sort of thing you'd want to bet against.
All that's still being under way. No one can say right out of here how it's gonna be in the end. Right now it's not a big deal to find a guy, who lives without internet connection and who needs just simplistic phone to make calls, nothing more. They do exist.
Comments
TouchWiz is a UI in its own right. It just so happens that it can also be applied to WinMo and Symbian devices, but there are devices out there that are TouchWiz only.
It's difficult to find much information about TouchWiz. Every phone I can find it runs ontop of another OS. It doesn't seem to be any thing revolutionary.
Frankly, how Apple, or any other manufacturer, got to their touchscreen end result is completely irrelevent here since we're talking about iPhone market share, not how to make a touchscreen based mobile phone.
I'm responding to your assertion that all phones should be lumped together because most phones are gaining 90% of the iPhone's functions. This isn't entirely accurate.
It's true many featured phones are gaining touchscreens with a grid of icons that launch apps. They are also gaining extended functionality of dedicated youtube, Facebook, or Skype. Outside of that you cannot do or add anything else. This is not 90% of the iPhone's functionality. If you think so, then you don't fully understand smartphones, or the purpose of their platforms.
...in your opinion. Regardless, they offer similar features to the iPhone, yet aren't considered smartphones. As such, the iPhone needs to be compared against ALL phones, or the smartphone category needs to be expanded enormously to cover all of these other devices.
Yes, of course it's my opinion. My comment that "they suck" was directed at the OS and UI. I had a Razr before the iPhone, and the interface was absolutely awful, even though it was able to do a lot of the things the iPhone can do. The iPhone's interface is far better and easier to use...in my opinion.
1. Nokia: 38.6%
2. Samsung: 16.2%
3. LG: 8.3%
4. Motorola: 8.3%
5. Sony Ericsson: 8%
6. RIM (BlackBerry): 1.9%
7. Kyocera: 1.4%
8. Apple (iPhone): 1.1%
9. HTC: 1.1%
10. Sharp: 1%
Other: 14.1%
Are the 2008 figures apparently.
Revenue percentage would be a lot more interesting to know.
It's difficult to find much information about TouchWiz. Every phone I can find it runs ontop of another OS. It doesn't seem to be any thing revolutionary.
I'm responding to your assertion that all phones should be lumped together because most phones are gaining 90% of the iPhone's functions. This isn't entirely accurate.
It's true many featured phones are gaining touchscreens with a grid of icons that launch apps. They are also gaining extended functionality of dedicated youtube, Facebook, or Skype. Outside of that you cannot do or add anything else. This is not 90% of the iPhone's functionality. If you think so, then you don't fully understand smartphones, or the purpose of their platforms.
Samsung Impression, S5230, S5600, S8300, A867 Eternity, T919 Behold, M8800 Pixon, F480, are just some of the TouchWiz phones.
Please, you cannot use the fact that these phones don't have the ability to install additional applications as a reason for them not being smartphones. Are you conveniently forgetting that the original iPhone didn't have this ability until 2.0, yet that was still trumpetted as a smartphone? The ability to add applications is NOT a requirement to be classified as a smartphone, which was a standard set by Apple themselves.
Samsung Impression, S5230, S5600, S8300, A867 Eternity, T919 Behold, M8800 Pixon, F480, are just some of the TouchWiz phones.
Please, you cannot use the fact that these phones don't have the ability to install additional applications as a reason for them not being smartphones. Are you conveniently forgetting that the original iPhone didn't have this ability until 2.0, yet that was still trumpetted as a smartphone? The ability to add applications is NOT a requirement to be classified as a smartphone, which was a standard set by Apple themselves.
Also I'm sure all of them do have apps, just not apps that come through a store run by the creator of the phone or apps with the degree of polish that some iPhone apps have.
My Razr (since everyone is noting their older phone) has a Hearts/Poker game I downloaded onto it. It came with Pac Man and Tetris. There are hundreds of games and apps available both for it and my new phone as well. The reality though is that I spend 90% of the time on it or my new phone doing texting, taking pictures or video, calling, using GPS, etc.
Smartphone = workstation. The fastest workstation from five years ago wouldn't even be a netbook today.
It was never anything more than a marketing category, the definition of which changed depending on who was doing the selling.
Again, we are seeing the emergence of truly portable computers which use the cellphone networks to achieve ubiquitous connectivity, which in turn engenders some new kinds of applications that are predicated on the assumption that you will have this computer on your person at all times and this computer always knows where it is and can always talk to a network-- which knows a bunch more stuff like where similar computers are and what the local terrain looks like and what your bigger computer back home is doing, etc.
As all of this gets more sophisticated and more processor intensive and just generally looking like the usual software/hardware advancement two-step that characterizes, you know, computers, it's going to get harder and harder to pretend like there is some kind of evolutionary process that turns "phones" into "computers", or that there is a continuum of hardware that makes it difficult to tell one from the other.
There are too many cultural trends driving the adoption of a pocketable, ubiquitously connected computer as a standard bit of industrialized world kit, to imagine that "phones" even have much of a future. Today's iPhone (or something with its capacities) is tomorrow's free "basic" phone, and our pocketable computers will become more powerful than our current desktops-- I think we can all agree that that's simply inevitable.
Phones with some functionality bolted on will be (and are quickly becoming) no more desirable than Palm's abortive Portfolio-- because there's no point in crippling a device it's not going to cost much less or be any more convenient.
I wasn't even talking about that and consider it to be a smart phone. Also no one is saying it has to beat the iPhone. It just has to be good enough, not the best.
That pretty much is the aim of free/ low cost phones is to just be good enough, and they ready dominate much of the phone market in that state.
The iPhone fills a small niche that does want the best, it will never compete with the low cost good enough phones on their own terms
Would they pay for this if it was $100 outlay and no contract? Would they when that phone has all the "new" features in a good enough package that their old phone didn't have and their old provider wants a new two year contract in a down economy?
This already is possible. You can buy just about any GSM phone you choose and purchase a SIM card with no contract.
You note the very trend yourself but fail to run the trend to the conclusion. When the market is mature and the cannibalization begins the prices begin to fall and add-ons become standard features in order to survive.
As the lower end phones adopt features of todays high end phones. The high end phones will continue to advance with better hardware and more sophisticated software, they will never reach and equilibrium.
Well we are looking into the future and discussing trends. It is clear that major carriers have had to respond to these regional providers and the consumer benefits. We have past examples in the same or similar markets. All these need to do is peal off a sliver and the majors freak out.
All carriers have to do to meet this is offer a cheaper phone with a cheaper monthly plan. This is little impact on it's premium phones and services.
Of course not. I'm speculating about the future on a rumor forum. What the hell do you expect?
Speculation still has to be grounded in the reality of what's going on.
Motorola stopped innovating. They are badly managed. Folks like myself do not want that to happen to Apple. The choice really isn't about whether to commoditize or not. If you don't someone else will. The choice is to commoditize on your own terms or have them dictated to you. I hope Apple does the former and not the latter.
It's true Motorola stopped innovating. But when the Razr was offered for little or nothing at generic mobile retailers that totally killed the Razr as a premium brand. Brand perception is extremely important and Apple is a pro at this.
They absolutely change them in the long run which is why they go out of business. I'm not saying that Boostmobile will thrive, quite the opposite. I'm saying they will slice off some market share and the majors will respond to grab it back. That response keeps the major players as major and kills the small guys but leads to cheaper rates. I have no doubt that we see $50 all inclusive plans in a couple years from the majors. We already have $99 unlimited calling minute plans that weren't imaginable just a few years ago.
No they won't, people who use Boost Mobile or Metro PCS are not in the market for iPhone's or BlackBerry's, so it's not a lost sale.
The difference is building a long term platform vs building a simple one time use OS. The OS on most feature phones are not built to be robust long term platforms. Feature phones don't have to deal with external developer kits and supporting system API's. Feature phone OS rarely receive updates. To gain added functionality you generally have to purchase a new phone.
A long term platform like iPhone or Blackberry has to be built from it's foundation for the next 10 years. The OS has to be flexible enough to change and grow and compete. Feature phone OS does not exist with these pressures.
Samsung Impression, S5230, S5600, S8300, A867 Eternity, T919 Behold, M8800 Pixon, F480, are just some of the TouchWiz phones.
Please, you cannot use the fact that these phones don't have the ability to install additional applications as a reason for them not being smartphones. Are you conveniently forgetting that the original iPhone didn't have this ability until 2.0, yet that was still trumpetted as a smartphone? The ability to add applications is NOT a requirement to be classified as a smartphone, which was a standard set by Apple themselves.
I don't think that "smartphone" is a classification that will even be around before too long.
It was never anything more than a marketing category, the definition of which changed depending on who was doing the selling.
Again, we are seeing the emergence of truly portable computers which use the cellphone networks to achieve ubiquitous connectivity,
I agree, their really is no hard definition of "smartphone" for consumers the line is already blurring. Todays smartphone should much more be considered ultra mobile PC's subsidized by mobile carriers.
You know, I think it's that "subsidy" part that really seems to fog people's minds. Like a bit of money makes a "smartphone" an extension of the carrier, so that anything else the carrier is offering is manifestly "the same."
Now, there's a bit of truth to that, in that say, a Verizon is bound and determined to make everything they sell be "Verizonified."
But, that, of course, is why Apple went with AT&T, and now the relationship they forged there is becoming more the norm. Carriers are realizing they do better to step out of the way and let real computer companies build the hardware they want and have it operate the way they want, with the carrier serving as ISP.
Hopefully this trend will continue, but even if it doesn't the distinction between computers and phones will get ever clearer.
needs a smartphone *shrugging shoulders*
Once upon a time, not everyone needed a cell phone. But technology has a way of making "bells and whistles" into "obvious and normal."
And then the culture changes in ways that reinforce the expectation that average people have that technology available to them, just like the culture assumes you have an email address and internet access.
Not everybody has those things, obviously, and those things come later if at all to impoverished nations, but if you apply for a job and tell them that you just don't "do" email or have no way of getting on line, your potential employer is going to consider you an "oddball" or possibly a Luddite of some sort.
How long did that take? For a recently voluntary technology to become a de facto requirement for living in an industrialized society?
And while there are still plenty of people who don't have cell phones, they tend to be older and every fewer. Not being able to reach someone whenever is fast becoming quaint.
So how long, I wonder, will it take for the kinds of things having a small computer on ones person most of the time enables to become the norm and the expectation?
I'm not saying any of these things are "good", just that it's how it seems to work. The hardware gets cheaper. It gets so cheap, it's pointless not to include it. Small computers become the free phones. And society plans accordingly.
Once upon a time, not everyone needed a cell phone. But technology has a way of making "bells and whistles" into "obvious and normal."
Please note, not everything technology offers is readily adopted. I already wrote "business cases", i.e. what customers are used to, don't change that rapidly, "if at all".
if you apply for a job and tell them that you just don't "do" email or have no way of getting on line, your potential employer is going to consider you an "oddball" or possibly a Luddite of some sort.
Please trust, they will forgive me those singularities, having my CV before eyes.
So how long, I wonder, will it take for the kinds of things having a small computer on ones person most of the time enables to become the norm and the expectation?
One more generation lifespan, I dare say. It's pointless to apply prospections to collected modern statistics.
The hardware gets cheaper. It gets so cheap, it's pointless not to include it. Small computers become the free phones. And society plans accordingly.
It's not hardware price which scares people. It's carriers' business models (contract prices).
I agree, their really is no hard definition of "smartphone" for consumers the line is already blurring. Todays smartphone should much more be considered ultra mobile PC's subsidized by mobile carriers.
I think a smartphone should have at least the following capabilities:
1. Phone
2. Email
3. Internet
4. Texting
5. Address Book
Everything else is extra.
Khm... Sophisticated reasoning.
Please note, not everything technology offers is readily adopted. I already wrote "business cases", i.e. what customers are used to, don't change that rapidly, "if at all".
True, not every technological change gets readily adopted. However, some get not just adopted but woven into the fabric of day to day life, and so quickly we quickly forget what life was like without them.
Commonplace reliance on cell phones, answering machines or services, home video formats, etc. all changed the cultural landscape, and did so pretty quickly. And, of course, the great sea change of our time, the internet, continues to spawn ever further permutations that start out as novelties and quickly become part of our shared idea of "normal."
Please trust, they will forgive me those singularities, having my CV before eyes.
It's not about singularities, like sporting unusual facial hair, though. It's about minimal requirements for the job. Not having an email address is fast approaching not having a phone, say, in terms of what it says about you. Like, "Hi, I'm the Unibomber living in a shack in the woods, and I'd like a job."
Like I say, not endorsing these attitudes, but you'll have to admit that society has ideas about a certain threshold of "connectedness" below which a person seems more than odd, they seem crazy.
One more generation lifespan, I dare say. It's pointless to apply prospections to collected modern statistics.
Impossible to say for sure, of course, but it's just one of those things that strikes me as inevitable, as it carries forward the relentless penetration of computers and connectedness into our everyday lives. It's the electricity of our era; not the sort of thing you'd want to bet against.
It's not hardware price which scares people. It's carriers' business models (contract prices).
Very true, but that will either change, or folks will start to regard those costs as just another inevitable price of "doing business" (by which I mean conducting ones life) in the 21st century-- just as once rare and expensive broadband costs, or cable costs, have gradually come to be the norm.
It was just a very sort while ago, after all, that any kind of "cellphone plan" was an extravagance, best left to movers and shakers in big cities.
I think a smartphone should have at least the following capabilities:
1. Phone
2. Email
3. Internet
4. Texting
5. Address Book
Everything else is extra.
That would make practically every device out there a smartphone!
- Any statistic is only usefull if it helps making conclusions and determining trends. This one definitely is. When we have the numbers next year, and the year after that it will make a LOT of sense. It is not like the Zune representing N% of the 30GB hard-drive based MP3 players. I would say reporting the netbooks and notebooks as a total number under the same category makes less sense because it does not help to see the trends.
- Most objections against the 1.5% market share assume that this percent is low and presents the iPhone unfavorably compared to the dumbphones. Neither is true.
- Carriers are still the most important player in the mobile market. Not sure about US, but the vast majority of the iPhone sales overseas is made by mobile operators. In many countries there is no Apple advertisement, carriers only. The state with the talks with China and reports on the situation in India and Russia suggests that not all carriers are dying to sell iPhone.
There was an expectation that Apple will redefine the relations between the mobile operators and the device manufacturers. Apple showcased the Visual Voicemail, and we expected that there will be future signs of cooperation. Two years after the launch, I would say the following:- Apple did make an impact on operator-manufacturer relations in the US, but using the word "redefined" is far stretched.
- Nobody cares about Visual Voicemail. Better give us the features other phones had 8 years ago, like sending a contact via SMS/MMS, group ringtone or settings combined in custom profiles.
- Apple puts restrictions requested by the mobile operators and Apple takes the fire for this.
- Many believe, me including, that Apple loses more on exclusive deals outside US than it gains. US is a bit different, but that is changing too.
Apple's position on the mobile market is very strong, but it is not an "Apple rules" position. Apple has a huge potential for the future but it still needs to turn the potential into reality.Who was spinning anything negative out of it? Jeez, without even saying anything negative, and simply saying something that isn't the 'accepted norm' around here, you get accused of being negative. Stop being so over protective, it's a company who are after your money plain and simple, not your friend!
It was negative when you descibed it as "Still Just" 1.5%. A more neutral title would have been: "iPhone 1.5% of Mobile Market" and allow the reader to determine if it is "still only" or "just" as opposed to "rapidly achieved" or whatever adjectives they wished to apply to the factoid.
It was negative when you descibed it as "Still Just" 1.5%. A more neutral title would have been: "iPhone 1.5% of Mobile Market" and allow the reader to determine if it is "still only" or "just" as opposed to "rapidly achieved" or whatever adjectives they wished to apply to the factoid.
Please point me to where I said that. I think you'll have an awfully hard time.
Commonplace reliance on cell phones, answering machines or services, home video formats, etc. all changed the cultural landscape, and did so pretty quickly. And, of course, the great sea change of our time, the internet, continues to spawn ever further permutations that start out as novelties and quickly become part of our shared idea of "normal."
Impossible to say for sure, of course, but it's just one of those things that strikes me as inevitable, as it carries forward the relentless penetration of computers and connectedness into our everyday lives. It's the electricity of our era; not the sort of thing you'd want to bet against.
All that's still being under way. No one can say right out of here how it's gonna be in the end. Right now it's not a big deal to find a guy, who lives without internet connection and who needs just simplistic phone to make calls, nothing more. They do exist.