Talk about a slow news day…
Today’s news scroll just feels soft to me. There are iPhone rumors, developers griping about Android “fragmentation”, and Google ponying up almost $1 Billion in a bid for Nortel’s patent portfolio.
As far as the iPhone 5 goes, it’s coming. We all know it’s coming. It’s going to be for sale at some point before many of us die. We know that it will have upgraded features over the last one. Will its upgraded features be vastly superior to other phones on the market? We’ll have to wait and see, but I doubt it.
I wrote about Android Fragmentation being a bunch of FUD. Seems I must be in the minority on that one. According to a report, 56% of Android developers said that fragmentation was a meaningful or “huge” problem. This is an increase over the past three months.
Maybe it is because I have done mobile development for so long, but to me fragmentation means serious discrepancies in implementation and capabilities.
However, in the today’s world, fragmentation is coming to mean numerous versions deployed in the wild, and the subtle differences between them. If the world had given a quarter of this amount of attention to J2ME fragmentation, Sun might not be in Oracle’s deathly grip.
Well, here’s where we stand today with Android. Android 2.2 dominates. If you target 2.1 or higher, you cover 92.88% of the market (excluding 3.0).
Interestingly, check out these charts from Chitika. This data is older and we’ll probably not be able to find this data going forward since it is now prohibited to gather this type of data. Compare the charts to the ones above and you’ll see some serious consolidation going on. Perhaps the reason the Apple SDK prohibits gathering this type of data is it would take the fragmentation argument off the table?
Lastly, Google is bidding almost $900,000,000 for the patent portfolio of Nextel. I hope they get it. There may be patents in there to silence all this crap about Android patent violations. Additionally, Nextel holds some juicy patents on LTE.
The patent system is horribly broken due to abuses and various other factors. It is in desperate need of an overhaul. Did you know that Google does not even rank the top 50 US companies that filed patents in 2010?
Is lightning striking at Verizon?
The iPhone is the most popular smartphone right now. Yes, Android has a larger market share but there is no single Android phone that is more popular than the iPhone. IPhones are like storm troopers; every one the same, dutifully marching towards domination of the industry.
The Verizon iPhone (which I’ll call the vPhone) has been out about two months. I wrote a blog post about how the vPhone was experiencing the same death grip issues as the iPhone 4 over at Techmento.com.
Now, there’s a new Android based phone at Verizon, the HTC Thunderbolt. HTC is a company based in Taiwan. They are a smartphone manufacturer who makes above average phones with way above average user experiences. For years, HTC made Windows CE based phones that looked pretty, which is no small feat. Considering this, it’s a safe bet that they can make an Android phone have an extremely compelling user interface as well.
The HTC usage profile is one of animated widgets that glimmer and shimmer from the glow of an off screen light. The clock flips with a smooth precision and weather data can cause a wiper to clear virtual raindrops from the inside of your screen. The HTC’s interfaces are sexy and sport tremendous attention to detail.
HTC has been very consistent in their user experience, causing their phones to be in reasonably high demand. In a worst case scenario, their compelling user interface can give them an advantage over phones with less enjoyable interfaces.
Combine this nice UI with the sheer violence of the Thunderbolt’s technical specs, and you have an extremely interesting phone worth upgrading to. It’s a smartphone that supports LTE (one of the first phones to do so, by the way) and has a 4.3 inch touchscreen. Did I mention is also has a 8 megapixel camera and 8GB of flash memory? Many people speculate the iPhone 5 will have an 8 megapixel camera after a recent slip by the Sony CEO Howard Stringer.
Which brings up an interesting scenario. Analysts at BTIG Research (registration required) polled 150 Verizon Wireless stores and asked the sales people which phone they sold more of the previous weekend; the vPhone or the Thunderbolt? According to their research, the ThunderBolt is outselling the vPhone in 28% of their stores. The sales in 61% of the stores were nearly identical, and the vPhone was outselling the Thunderbolt in 11% of the stores.
The report stresses that sales of the vPhone are strong, but sales of the Thunderbolt are strong or stronger.
So the combination of sexy UI and superior technical specs, it seems, is a recipe for competing with Apple.
This is extremely interesting to me and causes me to consider several possibilities. There are so many blogs dedicated to the iPhone and I’m starting to wonder if they’re not all just posting to outdo the other? Many of these blogs dutifully fail to mention many if not all the “killer features” coming to the next iPhone are already available on other phones. Usually an Android phone.
I also wonder if it’s still “hip” to be obsessed with Apple products? I’m wondering if the general public is starting to look around and realize that there is something else out there. I wonder if being Apple centric is starting to become passé.
According to the Verizon Wireless salespeople, customers are interested in the fast 4G capabilities of the Thunderbolt. They also mentioned some people have returned their Thunderbolt phone because of poor battery life. A real multitasking phone can really drain a battery.
Just how fast is the Thunderbolt when it comes to 4G? Phone arena has some nice info on their blog post. However, here are two graphics from that post that should tell you everything you need to know.
As someone who played online games over dialup, these are awesome numbers. It’s almost twice as fast as the best numbers I’ve ever gotten on the Sprint 4G (WiMax) network.
In a flash, the HTC Thunderbolt has rolled into the market; and as of right now it seems to be stealing some of the vPhone’s thunder. I wonder if this is just because the Thunderbolt is new, or if it indicates stormy times ahead for the iPhone’s dominance in the marketplace?
Foxconn losses and busting thieves!
Yeah, I know it is April Fools day, and the jokes are flying around like poo in the monkey cage at the zoo. I decided I’d pull my jokes somewhere else.
Instead, I wanted to bring to your attention that Foxconn posted a surprising $218.3m loss.
Foxconn, if you didn’t know, is the largest assembler in the technology field and handles many major companies. They were plagued with suicides last year. They were also hounded by stories of poor working conditions.
Thus, some speculate this surprising loss was due to two raises that Foxconn had to give their workers. Either way, inflationary prices are everywhere. In fact, the CEO of Wal-Mart said we’ll soon see price increases here in the U.S.A. In fact, he said we face serious inflation in the coming months.
Considering that the U.S. Dollar is the global reserve currency and we’ve been printing them like mad, perhaps we may see more losses from companies who deal in global industries like technology?
Speaking of Technology, there’s an app called “Walk and Text”. The app uses the camera to show you what you can’t see while your texting. It looks like the authors got tired of their app being pirated, so they released Walkinwat. Walkinwat promotes itself as a pirated version of Walk and Text.
However, if you don’t spend the $1 for Walk and Text and install Walkinwat instead you get an unpleasant notification that you’ve been busted for downloading and running a pirated copy of their app.
Then, it gets even more fun. It sends an SMS message to all your contacts. Awesome. Have a great weekend.