NEWS: Apple is fated to go the way of Sun Microsystems

"We're moving to a tech world with Apple on one side and virtually
everyone else on the other. Linux needs to more effectively compete
with Steve Jobs and the magic of Apple. It's important that
open-source products add more value for users than simply being
free."

Zemlin belives Apple is fated to go the way of Sun Microsystems,
which also believed it could beat Linux by controlling the full
hardware and software stack.

MORE:
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/10/zemlin_apple_versus_the_world/>

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Best regards,
John

If the iPhone is really so impressive,
why do iFans keep making excuses for it?

Online tracking firm Quantcast has just released new data that shows
mobile operating systems' current market share in North America, with
the newly renamed "iOS" (originally called "iPhone OS" - the OS powering
the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) in the lead...by miles. The Apple
mobile OS dominates its competitors with a huge chunk of mobile market
share, at 60%.

But don't let these numbers fool you. It's not how much or how little of
the mobile landscape each OS has claim to, but how fast this picture has
changed over the preceding months. The real winner here is Android, the
OS whose rapid gains have come at Apple's expense.

Only 20% for Android?

The latest stats - 58.8% for iOS, 19.9% for Android - may be a bit of an
initial letdown for Android fanboys who didn't read through the whole
report. (And yes, Google's mobile operating system now has its own
fanboys too, sporting a level of fanaticism once seen only among those
who bought Apple products.)

Android has just 20% market share? What? When there are 8.7 million
Android handsets here in the U.S. compared with 10.7 million iPhones?
Shouldn't the numbers be a bit closer? Well, if you were only comparing
mobile phones to mobile phones, they would be.

In this case, though, Quantcast is comparing mobile operating system
market share and that means counting the web surfing done by both the
iPod Touch and the iPad, too. Combined with the iPhone device count,
you're looking at 18.3 million unique "iOS" devices. And the iPad is
built for Web browsing.

Now, whether or not we should even be counting the iPad when talking
about "mobile" market share is a debate for another day (are tablets
more computer than mobile handheld?). Today, the big takeaway from the
report shouldn't be the numbers themselves, rather how they've changed.

When it Comes to Growth, the Winner is Android

As the Quantcast blog post explains, "the biggest winner is clearly
Google's Android." How can this be?

The fact is that Google's mobile OS has climbed rapidly over the prior
months, having gone from around 5% in January 2009 to 20% in May 2010,
stealing away market share from other mobile OS's, most notably Apple's,
whose iOS dropped from 75% share to 59% during that same time frame.

MORE:
<http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/android_steals_market_share_from_iphone.php>

--
Best regards,
John

If the iPhone and iPad are really so impressive,
then why do iFans keep making excuses for them?

<http://mobile.informationweek.com/10243/show/fd160db937a2b58b1cafa646eccce0eb/>:

The Apple iPhone accounts for the majority of Web activity from mobile
devices, but its share is shrinking as the popularity of smartphones
built with Google's Android operating system grows, an online tracking
firm reports.

The iPhone accounted for 58.8% of mobile Web usage at the end of May,
compared to 19.9% for Android phones and 10.4% for Research in Motion's
BlackBerry, Quantcast reported Monday. While those numbers favor Apple,
the trend over the last 12 months do not.

Compared to the same month a year ago, the iPhone's share in Web usage
fell 8.1%, while Android Phones' share rose 12.2%. RIM's share fell
1.2%.

In the three-month period ending in May, the iPhone's share fell 4.7%,
while Android phones saw 4.6% more Web activity and RIM 1.3%. Month to
month, the trend was the same with the iPhone losing a 0.9% share while
Android phones' share rose 1.3%. BlackBerry's share dipped 0.1%.

Part of the reason for the iPhone's drop in share is the rising
popularity of Motorola's Droid on the network of Verizon Wireless, the
nation's largest mobile carrier. AT&T is the exclusive carrier for the
iPhone in the U.S.

"Look back over the past year it's clear that most of Apple's share loss
has come at the expense of Motorola," Quantcast said.

Besides Motorola, Apple is also facing stiffer competition from
smartphone maker HTC, which makes the Incredible offered by Verizon and
the Evo 4G, recently released on Sprint.

Apple last week introduced the iPhone 4, which is more powerful and
sports a higher resolution display than current models. While the new
model is expected to boost sales of the smartphone line, it doesn't
address one of Apple's biggest headaches: AT&T.

The carrier has been criticized for providing poor voice and data
service for the iPhone in cities with high concentrations of the
smartphone, such as San Francisco and New York. To try to cope with the
bandwidth-hungry devices, AT&T this month stopped offering unlimited
data plans for new iPhone customers, in favor of plans with monthly data
limits.

Verizon, Motorola, Adobe plan presentation day before iPhone comes out

Verizon, Motorola, and Adobe have announced they will be introducing the
next generation of Droid mobile devices on Wednesday, June 23. The Droid
launch comes just one day before Apple officially launches iPhone 4, the
next-generation of Cupertino's super-popular smart phone. Adobe will be
on hand at the Droid launch on June 23 presumably to tout the virtues of
the much ballyhooed Flash Player 10.1 for mobile devices that is
compatible with Android 2.2, Palm WebOS, and Symbian S60 systems.

MORE:
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37741814/ns/technology_and_science-wireless/>

As Apple Inc. struggles to meet demand for the latest version of the
iPhone, Nokia Oyj is still waiting to ship its only model that may
compete.

The Finnish company has announced just one handset, the N8, from its new
high-end line based on revamped Symbian 3 software, while Apple’s
recently unveiled iPhone 4 is flying off virtual shelves with 600,000
pre-orders and other vendors are rolling out models with Google Inc.’s
Android software.

“The smartphone revolution has started and Nokia is not there,” said
Helena Nordman-Knutson, a Stockholm-based analyst at Oehman. The N8
“will be old when it’s out because everybody has taken the next step.”

MORE:
<http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-16/nokia-misses-smartphone-boom-as-customers-flock-to-iphone-4.html>