We live in a unique cellphone bubble in North America: We are the only region in the world where the majority of people get their cell phone service with a subscription. Here, prepaid phones are a fringe minority, relegated to lower-income populations, very infrequent users, and loaner phones. But in the rest of the world, prepaid phones vastly outnumber subscriptions, in some cases by 5-10x.
In a talk earlier this year to employees, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop asked a question that many were probably afraid to answer truthfully, given how Nokia is struggling to combat the iPhone. As BusinessWeek described it:
Whatever you may think about Apple there is no denying that they continue to set new standards for craft. Craft? Yes, that seemingly old-fashioned word that many confine to quilting, scrap-booking and other pursuits often disparagingly categorized as women's activities. My alma mater, the California College of the Arts, dropped the word craft from its name years ago, feeling that it was dragging the image of the school down. But craft as a concept has made something of a comeback in recent years, and no-one in the mass-production realm is doing it better than Apple.
Recently I wrote about why Google needed to take control of both hardware and OS for Android with the Nexus One. Others making hardware on top of Android had just not been able to create the quality of user experience that Google wanted, and, as the old saying goes, if you want something done right you have to do it yourself.
An interesting article on Gizmodo makes the same argument about Microsoft and Windows Phone 7:
Why Google had to take control of Android with Nexus One
Google's introduction of Nexus One, a phone to truly call its own, is a completely necessary move for the company. Only by taking ownership of the whole user experience will Google really be able to prove the value of its Android platform.
I am now a reverse switcher - I switched from a BlackBerry to an iPhone about six months ago, and now am switching back again. Why? Basically it comes down to the fact that the iPhone is really good at the stuff I do 10% of the time, but pretty poor at the stuff I do 90% of the time.
Reading a review of Documents To Go, a Microsoft Office-compatible document creater/reader app for the iPhone (as well as many other PDAs/smartphones) made me think of the old “laptops” that first appeared in the early 80’s. When typing on the iPhone in landscape mode you only get a few lines of text remaining visible, and Documents To Go exacerbates this further with additional menu bars that take up more vertical real estate (though they can be invisible-ized when not needed).
Some thoughts on the challenges faced by the three cross-platform OS makers -- Apple, Google and Microsoft -- on the disruption to their businesses caused by Netbooks.
The NYT’s Bits Blog spells out how the pricing for the iPhone basically turns it into a subscription, at least for people who want to upgrade their phone regularly. With the new prices and GS model announced Monday, there are now three tiers, as described by Bits:
