Esta vez creo que Iusacell ha hecho una buenísima maniobra. Si hace poco anunciaba que el flamante Palm Pre llegaría a México con (odio decirlo) Telcel, creo que estaba equivocado. Pues al parecer la página de internet de Iusacell se ha actualizado con el mensaje: “Llévate hoy tu Palm Pre 3G de Iusacell”. Recordemos que la red 3G de Iusacell lleva más tiempo en el mercado que la de Telcel, incluso ellos tienen el único BlackBerry Storm 3G en México, cosa que Telcel no.

Ahora bien, la parte negativa del anuncio son los precios que ambas compañías darán. No esperes una súper ganga por estos equipos, con planes de renta mensual. Ahora esperemos Movistar traiga algún Android, esa empresa necesita un levantón en este País.

I noticed on PreCentral this morning that the European update was available to download and install and being the sad person I am I couldn’t wait until I got back after work. Oh no, I had to do it at 7.45am. Still, it went smoothly, downloading via wifi very quickly and then it took a further 10 minutes to “validate” and then install.

I then headed off to work with the thought of having all those new apps to download when I got back and try and what the heck, probably even splash out on a few.  Cue Family Fortunes “that’s not in the top 6 answers” buzzer noise…even worse, the amount of available apps in the App Catalogue has in fact reduced, not marginally as in 345 down to 329 but rather down to 67. Yes, 67…less than a quarter of what was available this time last night. Where in the name of France have all the apps gone and the supposed ability to actually buy some?

This is more than a tad disappointing, in fact it feels like a slap in the chops after waiting patiently for nearly a month to get what is, after all, a fairly basic feature of any smartphone. I’m sure the developers will be delighted to hear that a potential sales segment have been denied the ability to buy some software.  I’ve been scouring through some threads on the PreCentral GSM Pre forums and everyone else seems to be in the same boat…rudderless. Some of the posters rightly point out it doesn’t look like Palm actually want this device to succeed. Just when I thought Palm had stopped shooting themselves in the foot they come along with this one.

Ah well, back to the Hero until this gets sorted.

Well, I was quite surprised that the folks over at TechCrunch today took some interesting data from AdMob and blew it up into something it clearly is not! In the post “Apple and Android Now Make Up 75 Percent of U.S. Smartphone Web Traffic” TechCrunch makes leaves one important word out of the headline— “Ad” and gives the totally wrong assumption that the AdMob data covers all mobile traffic! They go on to say that RIM, Palm, Microsoft and Nokia are all losing lots of share in the US and globally. Comments on the site show that people are taking this data the wrong way based on the headline and the the way the post is written, thinking that the game is over for the other device vendors. Only a few people commenting on the site have realized the error.

So I need to point this out to the folks over at TechCrunch and others:

Share of Mobile Ad Requests/Impressions/Clicks

DOES NOT EQUAL

Share of Mobile Web Traffic

(ad traffic, browser traffic, media consumption over browsers, downloads, etc.)

Share of Mobile Ad Requests/Impressions/Clicks

DOES NOT EQUAL

Share of Mobile Device Shipments/Sales or Installed Base

With over 15 years experience in mobile, media, and market research I don’t have much tolerance for sites that twist data analytics, blow it out of proportion, and create misleading headlines to drive readership. I’m a regular TechCrunch reader, love their posts, and I’m frankly surprised that some editor over there didn’t check this out! Their headline is pretty viral in the blogosphere today. I also have a lot of respect for the folks over at AdMob and their great data. If you read the last page of their report, they clearly state what they track and what their methodology is!

I’ve attached AdMob’s last page below and their full report is in my Box.net box since they publicly posted it.

It’s interesting data as far as the current direction of mobile ad traffic in October. But that is all it is, ad traffic! And it’s backwards looking, which is what analytics is too!

Source: AdMob

With Apple (s aapl) once again blocking the ability to synchronize iTunes music with Palm’s (s palm) Pre and Pixi, it’s time for some of you to consider other options. I’m still happy with DoubleTwist or simple drag-and-drop methods to move music, but I noted a mention of MediaMonkey on PreCentral, which offers another option. Version 3.2 of this Windows-only software hit last week and like DoubleTwist, it boasts a fair number of supported devices. With the free version of MediaMonkey, you can sync tracks, playlists, album art and other information over to your webOS device, not to mention several brands of digital audio players, iPhone, and Android (s goog) devices.

But MediaMonkey does far more than synchronize music. Tag-editing, CD ripping and conversion, track identification, playlist creation, podcatching, and reporting of your audio habits are also supported, making MediaMonkey more useful than a barrel of you-know-whats. The $19.95 Gold version adds advanced features like on-the-fly audio conversion and support for multiple music libraries, so advanced users will want to check it out. In the meantime, the free version of MediaMonkey gives webOS users on Windows another option to sync music and playlists to a Pre or Pixi.

I’ve had a of using the Palm Pre which is long enough to discover how well it works for me as an everyday device. A quick list of observations are:

The Good:

• The screen is clear with great colour detail.
• WebOS – this rocks. Multitasking is great and switching between apps is easy.
• The Palm Synergy app that coordinates calendar and contacts between all you different sources such as gmail, facebook, phone sim etc.. is really good and gives you a great picture of your network and diary.
• The keyboard is familiar and (for me at least) preferable to a touch screen keyboard.
• The number of apps is growing
• It isn’t an iphone. This is actually much more pleasing than you might think. Many people I know have an iphone and the way they drone about it as being the be all and end all of mobile devices gets annoying. I know iphones are good but somtimes being different is also good.

The Bad

• The number of apps is still small and you know that it is a low priority target platform for the developers of mobile apps. I know Palm are working hard to attract developers but the availabiulity of many apps (online banking etc..) is a simple factor of handset popularity and Palm really is playing catchup here.
• Palm Pre is a 2 handed device. Unlike Balckberry and others where you can work reasonably well with one hand, Palm requires you to focus on it with both hands to do pretty much everything. Even answering a call when the phone is locked needs 2 hands or a level of dextirity I have yet to achieve.
• ITunes sync is an on/off affair as Palm and Apple play their childish games. Debates as to who is right/wrong aside, I’d like Palm to fix upon a strategy for managing media on the Palm. If it is itunes then great, please work out your differences with Apple. If it is something else then also great. Just please sort it out.
• Certain apps (mainly googlemaps) can get slow and unresponsive when trying to multi-task and at extreme times require a “reboot” of the phone to get back to a sane state.

The Ugly

• The battery life. The battery life sucks if you are using the device for email, connecting to wifi, web browsing etc.. I struggle to get a day of use out of it when travelling and take every opportunity to charge whenever I can. On the plus side you can buy spare batteries and even extended life batteries but this does of course require extra expense.

Othe comments

I’ve applied an Invincible Shield from Zagg which is tricky to apply but is without doubt a good investment to protect the devices from scratches and wear’n'tear.

More details from the ER. Took a moment to focus on a palm outside.

The hospital is a great place to just sit and pray for people too.  Challenge yourself to do that the next time you are there, and it really helps the hours go by.

Even though Google has become a gigantic business and is poised to take over the world, they still think and act like a small company. They listen to their users feedback and use it to improve their products and product offerings. Tadaa, look where they are today.

Anyway, they’ve released a new Google News offering for iPhone, Android, and Palm Pre.

This new version provides the same richness and personalization on your phone as Google News provides on desktop. Our new homepage displays more stories, sources, and images while keeping a familiar look and feel. Also, you can now reach your favorite sections, discover new ones, find articles and play videos in fewer clicks. If you are an existing Google News reader on desktop, you will find that all of your personalizations are honored in this mobile version too.

Just go to http://news.google.com and start reading the news!

[Google Mobile]

Rumor: European release of webOS 1.3.1 imminent | PreCentral.net.

Palm had previously hinted that v1.3.1 would be available by the end of November so time is starting to run out if that is to be the case. PreCentral has the gen on this one……..I’m still in a quandry about the choice between Android and Web OS, both of which I find to be very good.

Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM) has sort of already fallen from grace despite all the hype behind the Palm Pre.  Throw in that Pixi too.  Discounting is trumping what may be weaker sales.  It turns out that Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) is offering the Palm Pre for Sprint for a mere $79.99.  Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S) has it offered direct at $149.99 price after discounts and rebates at its site.  Sprint Nextel is also selling the Palm Pixi for $99.99, but the Palm Pixi is now for sale for $24.99 at Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE: WMT).  We confirmed all these prices on the websites, and this is going to confirm tough times for Palm and its finances.

Discounting is not unusual, particularly as more and more competition is heating up in the space.  But the Palm Pre was discounted very fast out of the chute, and then the geared down Palm Pixi, with the worst name by the way, seemingly came on to the market too soon.

There is no way that this sort of discounting cannot rub off on Palm.  Even though the discounts are usually at the retail level and subsidized by two-year contracts, the merchants usually turn on the suppliers for cuts.  That translates to the notion that Palm will have compressed margins and now it will likely have to make even more unit sales to hit its revenue targets in a highly competitive market.

Palm shares are down just over 3% at $11.26 on only about 93,000 shares as of 9:15 AM EST.  As a reminder, the most recent short interest data showed a short interest of 45 million shares in Palm.

JON C. OGG
NOVEMBER 20, 2009

Reuters:   The Senate is near its first vote on healthcare.

Reuters:   Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) is betting on corporate spending for its recovery.

Reuters:   Time Warner’s (NYSE:TWX) AOL showed that the worst is not over for media job cuts.

Reuters:   China cyber-spying against the US will probably grow.

Reuters:   Oprah will end her talk show in September 2011.

WSJ:   Large shareholders are asking Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) to cut bonuses.

Reuters:   GE (NYSE:GE) and Vivendi are $1 billion apart on the value of NBCU.

Reuters:   Ferrero may want the Cadbury gum and candy unit.

Reuters:   The bank bill is delayed in the House and the Senate is divided over the legislation.

Reuters:   The Fed sees little risk in inflation in a weak economy.

Reuters:   Chrysler may close another 100 dealerships.

Reuters:   PricewaterhouseCoopers says corporate accounting fraud is rising around the world.

WSJ:   Gap’s (NYSE:GPS) profits rose 25%.

WSJ:   Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) says Windows 7 is selling well.

WSJ:   VW’s board approved its merger with Porsche.

WSJ:   The chairman of GM is pushing for higher quality cars.

WSJ:   Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) announced plans for its Chrome operating system.

WSJ:   The Administration’s estimate of stimulus job gains is being attacked.

WSJ:   GE (NYSE:GE) is focusing on industrial and infrastructure businesses.

WSJ:   Retailers are cutting prices on the Palm (NASDAQ:PALM) Pixi.

WSJ:   China Mobile (NASDAQ:CHL) is counting on 3G for growth.

WSJ:   Sony (NASDAQ:SNE) will focus more on moving its businesses online.

WSJ:   More homeowners are falling behind in mortgage payments.

WSJ:   Private equity firm Carlyle will put money into three Chinese high growth firms.

WSJ:   The EU is speeding up an antitrust investigation into the McGraw-Hill (NYSE:MHP) S&P group.

WSJ:   Harbinger cut its stock holdings in The New York Times (NYSE:NYT).

WSJ:   A joint venture between BHP Billiton (NYSE:BHP) and Rio Tinto (NYSE:RTP) makes a merger more likely.

WSJ:   Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) is falling behind rivals in sales.

WSJ:   Sears (NASDAQ:SHLD) cut its losses with cost controls.

NYT:   An FHA effort to prop up mortgages is putting taxpayers at risk.

NYT:   Private equity firms are trying to raise money in China.

NYT:   Geithner hope to end the TARP program.

NYT:   The Treasury will auction off some of the warrants it received as part of the bank bailout

NYT:   The OECD was cautious on its forecast for the global economy.

NYT:   France may issue $52 billion in bonds.

NYT:   JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) will buy the part of its British banking partner that it does not own.

FT:   US short-term interest rates are turning negative as banks move toward safer investments.

FT:   Many retailers are pushing smartphone products for the holidays.

FT:   The difference in the value that GE and Vivendi put on NBCU could kill a merger with Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA).

Bloomberg:   Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) says China stocks could rise 30% on liquidity and valuations.

You can join our open email distribution list to hear more news on Buffett and other investment gurus, IPOs, secondary offerings, private equity, key analyst calls, and more.

Douglas A. McIntyre

The Social Media era is rolling along quite nicely over the last year or so and it seems everyone is scrambling to figure out the best way to handle all the Facebook updates, Tweets, LinkedIn connections, You Tube Video’s, and all the great tools for promoting your business.

In the same time frame, the smartphone revolution is also in high gear with the Droid revolution dominating the industry news and creating a huge buzz for the wireless carriers.  It seems everyone is getting an iPhone, Droid, BlackBerry, Palm Pre, etc. and the appetite for them in the U.S. is voracious; take a look around and smartphones are everywhere.

Recent conversations with a variety of small business owners have centered around how to handle the time that’s necessary to manage all this Social Media ’stuff.’  They lament they barely have time for email, much less be able to take the time to update their Facebook Fan Page, Tweet, add LinkedIn connections, write their blog, etc.  I fully understand their dilemma as Social Media does take time to manage; there are many wonderful automated tools to make it easier, but I think one of the best tools for the small business is already in their hands.  Their smartphone.

Smartphones allow you to update your Social Media sites with relative ease; there is Facebook Mobile for a variety of devices, send Tweets, check LinkedIn, and even write your blog.  The new Motorola Cliq uses Motoblur software to aggregate all your Social Media in one easy to use area on the Android-powered smartphone.  There are many different variations in the iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm Pre, and all the new Android devices flooding the market to manage and keep your Social Media content fresh and insightful.

“Smart’ Social Media Solutions take a solid plan with benchmarks and must be measurable in order to help branding, increase market penetration, and monetize these efforts; smartphones are a great tool to help make this a reality.  Think of it this way; you carry a smartphone for email, etc. so you manage your email, etc. as it comes.  You now can do this with your Social Media in small, manageable bites.

This blog is brought to you by my smartphone; gotta love it.

In this whole tit-for-tat with Palm over synching iTunes, Apple is only hurting its own iPOD owners!
http://bit.ly/BbhHT

It’s horrible to see the forests turn into plantations, to make palm oil, which is mainly used in bathroom products such as shampoo and bodyshower.  It’s not like i’m really into the green, bio stuff. But it’s sad to see this happen. I do really care about the animals that live in these forests. How could we stop this, so the orang utan’s have a save home.

It is Thursday and that means it’s time for another Palm (s palm) Press. Palm Press is our weekly look at the world of Palm. The Pixi has only been selling for a short bit but you can already pick one up at Amazon for $25. Yes, you read that right, $25. Palm and Sprint (s s) should just go ahead and give the things away. Sell us accessories, the mark-ups obviously higher anyway. BTW, the Pre is only $80 at Amazon. Things can’t be sitting too well with Palm right about now, as savvy shoppers will have even less reason to buy a new Pixi instead of a Pre.

This week saw the rollout of webOS 1.3.1, and it was largely a rollup of fixes and minor tweaks. One of the most significant changes in the new release, to me anyway, is the inclusion of browser cookies in the backup. That means your browsing information survives a rebuild and restore, which is great news. Yahoo! users will now love the synchronization with webOS as it was added to the mix. The change in webOS 1.3.1 most discussed is the one that isn’t there, Palm apparently decided to throw in the towel in the wrestling match with Apple (s aapl) over iTunes compatibility. This update is the first by Palm that didn’t reverse the most recent iTunes update to block webOS phones from syncing with iTunes.

In happier news for Palm, the Pre was named by Consumer Reports as one of the top products of the year. The Pre placed eighth on the CR list of top smartphones, behind the iPhones (3GS and 3G) and the BlackBerry (s rimm) Bold.

An interesting article about the rise of Apple and fall of Microsoft in the smartphone market.  Personally I dislike Macs and and anything Apple related.  I don’t even own an iPod and the only reason I have iTunes on this computer is because my partner uses an iPod.  On the upside, she too uses a a Windows Smartphone, like I sometimes do.  We currently use the Palm Treo 500 which admittedly is an entry level smartphone.  It has no touch screen, a crap camera and the music player, while using Windows Media Player Mobile, leaves a lot to be desired.

What I do enjoy about the Windows Mobile phone is the ability to read and edit native Office documents on the go.  It may seem a bit geeky and unnecessary to access an Excel spreadsheet on the train but document reading and writing is great, and I have even studied a PowerPoint show on the train in preparation for a presentation.  I am told that the iPhone does lack these features currently, and while I admit they don’t work that well on my phone, I would hope they run more efficiently on the higher end phones.

I really like the potential for seamless synchronisation between phone and PC, but at this stage it’s just that – potential. In all honesty while I do use the Windows phone on occasion, it’s size and absolutely crap battery life means most of the time I take out my trusty Nokia 5310.  Even with the music player I get at least 2 days out of it.

As someone who has been using a smartphone of some sort for a number of years, I get a little frustrated at all the iPhone hype.  I’ve been emailing, surfing the web, reading docs, managing time and listing to music on my phone for years.  Microsoft and to a greater extent Palm have really missed the boat here – they had the potential to saturate the market with devices that were superior to the iPhone, but lost out it on cool.

From: Wired.com

As a former Palm OS user, the Palm Pre is a phone I’ve been really looking forward to using. Years ago I had a Handspring Visor, then a Sony CLIÉ.  Even once I usurped them with a cell phone that could sync all my organizer data, I lusted after the Palm Treo 600 and 650.  After a few years of Palm’s wheel-spinning the iPhone came along and their anemic offerings lost their appeal, but I’ve still kept a soft spot for Palm-related things.  So when in January Palm revealed webOS, I was stoked.  The multitasking, web-based app development and iPhone-like multitouch gestures all hooked me, and I was ready to get it into my grubby little hands.

Holding it in said grubby hands at the Sprint store last night, I was pleased with the build of the phone.  It felt more solid than the CLIQ, and it seemed to have fewer little bits of plastic joined together, thus resulting in a more rigid feel.  It’s still a slider, which I’m not a big fan of build-wise, but it was still an improvement over my last experience in that regard.

The screen was very impressive.  It’s definitely the brightest of any phone I’ve seen so far, easily outperforming the one in my iPhone and any of the other phones on display there in the Sprint store.  Pictures and video looked great on it, better than on my iPhone.  Even though the display is the same resolution (320×480), it’s a good bit smaller dimension-wise so I have to squint a little harder at it if I’m not wearing my glasses (which I don’t 90% of the time).  For this reason I wish the screen were a little bigger, but it’s certainly not a dealbreaker.

I liked webOS a lot.  Any degree of multitasking is welcome, and webOS delivers in spades.  I’ve always been curious how other mobile operating systems handle opening all these different things when they only have ~256MB of memory at their disposal, so I put it through its paces by opening lots of apps and browser windows simultaneously and switching between them.  I opened about 8 different “cards” and didn’t notice any significant performance hit, so webOS’s ingenious method of having all apps being nothing more than a window in a browser seems to pay off in terms of performance.  One thing that always irks me on the iPhone is that while you can open multiple windows in Safari, the phone won’t keep the page in more than one loaded for very long.  I assume this is due to memory constraints, and if window number two needs more memory it will forget the content of window number one so that two can do what it needs.  I understand the technical practicality of this, but it’s still frustrating when you’re trying to flip back and forth between two windows and it will have to reload the first one because it forgot its content.  I did try having several browser windows open on the Pre, each displaying a page with a large number of individual pictures (the sort of page the iPhone is prone to forget) and it did maintain the content of each page for several minutes of testing.  After I’d opened a bunch of other apps and gotten up to about 8 different cards it finally forgot the content of the first browser card I opened (I assume for the same reason the iPhone does), but it definitely fared better than the iPhone in that regard.

The interface wasn’t as responsive as the CLIQ’s was.  Like my iPhone 3G there was a slight, fraction-of-a-second delay on a lot of taps, but I didn’t experience any of the frustratingly long (e.g. 1+ second) pauses like I do regularly on my iPhone.  I experienced a complete phone crash while watching the demo video that was on the phone.  It was playing for several seconds, then the frame abruptly froze and the phone became unresponsive.  Tapping the button to go back to the home screen did nothing, and after a few seconds the phone simply restarted itself, presenting me with the Palm boot screen.  While it could totally be a one-off glitch, I can’t say that webOS’s built-in media player crashing the whole device while playing Palm-supplied content left me with a flawless impression of the Pre’s stability.

I did the same network tests that I did on the CLIQ, trying to get a feel for Sprint’s EV-DO network.  Pings were startlingly low, averaging about 140ms.  This was really impressive for someone used to the 240+ ms pings on UMTS networks.  However, Sprint’s actual transfer speed wasn’t impressive.  I did about ten tests and got widely divergent results.  While two were in the 800kbps range, most were down around 500kbps, two even lower.  It definitely wasn’t as consistent as T-Mobile, or even as consistent as AT&T.  But AT&T definitely has bad days, and maybe I just caught Sprint at an off moment.  Not a great impression in terms of bandwidth, though.  Real-world testing in the browser yielded average results, more or less on par with my iPhone 3G.  It loaded pages well without any noticeable hiccups (it got the page the CLIQ didn’t) but wasn’t as snappy as the CLIQ had been.  The presence of multitouch was very welcome in the browser, though, as I forgot to mention in my CLIQ review that the absence of it on that device was a bit frustrating.  Obviously as an iPhone user pinching to zoom and double-tapping to zoom on a particular element are second nature, and much simpler and more precise solutions than the zoom slider the CLIQ tried to pass off instead.  I was happy to see those gestures implemented on the Pre.

Image from precentral.net

The keyboard was a huge disappointment.  At least on the CLIQ there was a soft keyboard I could fall back to if I didn’t like the hard one, but on the Pre no such option exists.  Which is unfortunate, because I really disliked the Pre’s keyboard.  First off, it is tiny.  Far and away the smallest I’ve seen.  I’ve got big hands and already find normal mobile keyboards a bit cumbersome because of this, but this really took it to the extreme.  The keys are simply too cramped together for me to type on comfortably.  When I tried to type with the pads of my fingers, as I do on my iPhone and have done on all other mobile keyboards, the pad of each finger touches three or four different keys simultaneously.  As long as I’m careful about where I’m directing my finger’s pressure I was usually able to depress only the desired key, but this required extra care and made typing a less than comfortable experience.  I found I could type much more precisely and with less uncertainty if I bent down my thumbs and used their tips and my nails, but this quickly made my hands really uncomfortable so that was no good.  Additionally, the keys were made of some sort of soft rubber material that kept the keys from having the sort of firm assurance I’d like from a hard keyboard.  I’m sure typing on the Pre would get easier with time, but no amount of time is going to make the keyboard a more reasonable size.  I expect that even after months of practice, typing on the Pre’s keyboard would still be less than ideal.

So while in my head I was definitely expecting the Pre to be a final contender, it actually got knocked out pretty quickly entirely because of having a disappointing keyboard.  I liked the software, it was reasonably responsive and the phone seemed reasonably well-built, but given how much I disliked the only way the device allows you to type, that pretty much ruins everything else.  Maybe Palm will put out a device in the future with a better keyboard (the brand new Pixi sitting next to the Pre I tried wasn’t significantly better), but until then I’m sadly going to have to steer clear of their offerings.

AT&T (s t) isn’t the only operator whose network shortcomings have been exposed by data-hungry iPhone users. O2 — which until recently was the only UK operator to carry Apple’s (s aapl) gadget — said it will spend $166 million over the next several months to shore up its network to meet ever-increasing demands from smartphone users. Additionally, the carrier said it will build 40 new cell sites in and around London in advance of the holiday season.

Like AT&T, O2 has drawn criticism regarding its network performance as smartphone usage increases. The increased traffic is directly attributable to the iPhone 3G S and the Palm (s palm) Pre, which are the best-selling devices on its network, CTO Derek McManus said in a release:

“World-class smartphones have brought about an unprecedented demand on mobile data networks,” according to McManus. “Data on our network has increased 20-fold in the last year alone. As a result, we have recently experienced some isolated pressures in London where there is the highest concentration of smartphone users.”

O2 has effectively leveraged its exclusive iPhone deal, gaining nearly 300,000 net mobile subscribers in the third quarter and emerging as the only UK operator to increase revenue in the first nine months of the year. The company isn’t likely to keep up that pace as rival carriers begin to offer the iconic device, but if O2 can address its network problems it could retain its crown as the top carrier in the region — until Orange (s fte) and T-Mobile consummate their merger, anyway.

Just after 2 weeks palm has cut the prices AGAIN now at wallmart and amazon you can get the palm pixi for $25 and the pre for $80 which is really good for those phones I am going to pick this up.

Sometimes its more difficult than others to read the signs. For instance (because this is my latest obsessive compulsive thought), I’ve been planning for a month or more to upgrade mine and my husband’s cell phones in December. We have been Palm users for a couple of years, now, (not counting the original Palm Pilots that were not phones, also) so were originally planning to move to the Palm Pre. Then we started researching the apps, battery life, durability, and countless other nit-picks about every smart phone on the market and are now right back at square one. Actually, as of this postingm, we aren’t even at square one, we’re behind square one…and its frustrating and heck! How am I supposed to stop obsessing about cell phones (to upgrade, not to upgrade, what to upgrade to if we go through with said upgrade) when the issue is not being resolved?

OK, so I decided the answer to my obsession was prayer. That’s certainly logical. Now that I really think that God cares what phone I have or don’t have, but I’m pretty sure He still knows what’s best for me and which phone will help more and which will hinder more, if you know what I mean. So, I prayed. Yes, I prayed about cell phones. I know, I know.

So, I arose from my prayer time over cell phones completely at ease with whatever came my way. That if it was best for us to keep the phones we have for now and make no change, that I wouldn’t pout. That if the upgrades were a good plan (or at least not a bad plan) then that decision would be made obvious as the nose on my face or the crows feet around my eyes from years of big smiles. And my mind was (note, was) at ease.

So, I’m good to go and no longer obsessing. Then, I get to the office, and I’ll be darned if the very first email that pops up is from Fora.tv telling me that they now have an app for the iPhone. Now I’m just confused, because I’m sure that God isn’t really giving me the go-ahead for the phone of all phones, the acclaimed iPhone 3GS…or is He? I can justify the hack out of an iPhone purchase (or even some of the Android phones, for that matter). I do tons of stuff on my phone, practical stuff…now just games and goofy stuff. I blog, email, work on the company websites, facebook (thats no goofy), tweet (not goofy, either), and so much more. Phones any more truly are our personal computers, and this is especially true for me as we do not even have a computer at home anymore since we use our cell phones for everything.

So, all of that obsessing to ask: When we pray for definite signs and directions, and we get answers that surprise us, how do we answer? As for the phone, I’m still not convinced that I’ve gotten the last of my direction on that matter and I won’t buy a new phone until I am sure, but really this is just the latest of many personal examples of this kind of signal reading test. When do we know the answers from the wishful thinking???

I’d love your input!!!

*******************************************************************

An hour or so later…

Anyone who reads much of my writing knows what’s to come. An little while after finishing up the posting on my cell phone conundrum, I came to the following passage in my New Testament reading. I won’t commentate further, the Word speaks for itself!

Then someone out of the crowd said to him, “Master, tell my brother to share his legacy with me.”
But Jesus replied, “My dear man, who appointed me a judge or arbitrator in your affairs?”
And then, turning to the disciples, he said to them, “Notice that, and be on your guard against covetousness in any shape or form. For this man’s real life in no way depends on the number of his possessions.”
(Luke 12:13-15, Modern English Translation)

and then further down…

“You must not set your heart on what you eat or drink, nor must you live in a state of anxiety.”
(Luke 12:29, Modern English Translation)

By now i’m sure you’ve seen Verizon’s aggressive “idon’t” campaign to compete against the iPhone with it’s new Motorola Droid.  This is Verizon’s second attack on the iPhone after the first attempt with the Blackberry Storm failed miserably.   Despite the Storm, AT&T continued to add new subs on the strength of the iPhone.  Just last quarter AT&T added another 3.2 million new iPhones, 40% of whom were new customers to AT&T (a 2 year trend now).

Although Verizon desperately needs to counter the iPhone, I believe this latest attempt will hurt RIM much more than Apple.   In other words, it will backfire cannibalizing more Verizon RIM devices than AT&T iphone devices.   Here are two reasons why:

1. Droid Takes Advertising Dollars from RIM

RIM was until now Verizon’s flagship smartphone partner.  If we ignore the ailing Windows Mobile platform, RIM has virtually the only competitive smartphones in Verizon stores.   In the past Verizon poured most of its advertising dollars in the smartphone category to promote RIM Devices.  But that is about to change.   Not only does RIM have to share Verizon’s ad budget with Droid, Droid will get the better part of it.   Verizon has said publicly that it will promote Droid with its “biggest marketing campaign ever.”   This is going to hurt RIM.  Although other carriers in the US carry RIM devices, Verizon is the only operator where RIM enjoys flagship status.  AT&T’s flagship device is the iPhone of course.  Sprint’s flagship devices are now Palm and Android devices.  And T-Mobile is pushing Android of course.

2. Droid’s Target Market Overlaps more with RIM’s than the iPhone’s

The second reason is a bit more subtle, but perhaps more significant.   Droid’s feature set will appeal more to the traditional RIM user than to iPhone’s target market.  This means that Droid will naturally attract more would be RIM users than would be iPhone users.  Let me elaborate.

Roughly speaking, there are two main clusters of smartphone users:  those users who optimize for communications features and those who optimize for entertainment features.   Users optimizing for communications features need good quality voice service, great email and Exchange support, and a preferably physical keyboard for typing lots of emails.    Users optimizing for entertainment want a great gaming experience and great music and video services, including media synchronization (i.e.  iTunes).  Although these two segments are increasingly overlapping,  they are still distinct.  It’s no mystery that the iPhone dominates the entertainment segment with its great music player and iTunes integration.  When it comes down to it, the iPhone is a great entertainment device and not that great voice phone (which users who optimize for communications demand).   Unlike a voice phone, the iPhone has no physical keyboard.  And running on the AT&T network, iPhone users often complain about dropped calls but put up with the problem because they favor the entertainment features.

I know many of you are thinking that the iPhone is a good email device too.  Although the iPhone is making clear inroads into the communications space with Exchange support for example, this is not the iPhone’s sweat spot.   RIM of course optimizes around communications capabilities.  With the best support of corporate email systems, a great physical keyboard for typing lots of emails, and a good voice phone.

Droid is a better communications device than it is a good entertainment device.  For this reason, Droid will hurt RIM more than Apple.  Droid comes with the Verizon network which offers better voice service and fewer dropped calls.   Droid is made by Motorola, who makes better phones and radios than Apple.  Droid featurs a physical keyboard that many RIM users will demand before switching to a new platform.  At the same time, Droid is missing key entertainment capabilities such as VCAST music,  iTunes support, or any other good media synchronization service.

It will be interesting to watch what happens, but for these reasons, my bet is that Droid will hurt RIM more so than the iPhone.  This is despite such aggressive Droid marketing campaign attacking the iPhone directly.

What do you think?   If you are an iPhone user, would you switch to Droid?   If you are a RIM user, would you?

RIMMillä on ongelma. Sen uudet laitteet eivät ole oikein innostaneet bloggaajia, analyytikoita eivätkä kuluttajia. Pelkkä sähköposti ei oikein riitä. USA:n mobiilimarkkina näyttää mallia muille markkinoille ja siellä yhdistelmälaitteiden tai älykännyköiden, mitä nimeä haluatkaan käyttää, osuus kokonaismarkkinasta saattaa kohota jopa 50%:iin ihan volyymeistäkin parin vuoden sisään. Rohkeimmat ennustavat että jo ensi vuonna joka toinen USA:ssa myytävä luuri olisi älykännykkä. Tärkeitä ominaisuuksia ovat selain, applikaatiot, sähköposti, pikaviestimet, paikannus jne. Niistä RIMM hallitsee hyvin oikeastaan vain sähköpostin. Käyttöliittymä ei oikein vakuuta ja tarvisi vähän boostia. RIMMillä on edessään epävarma tulevaisuus ja mahdollisuus kääntyä negatiiviseen kasvuun hurjien kasvuvuosien jälkeen.

Mitä RIMMin pitäisi tehdä? Sen pitäisi panostaa käyttöjärjestelmään tai ottaa esimerkiksi Symbian tai Android käyttöön. Ekaan sillä ei oikein ole resursseja ja kaikenlisäksi alkaa olla markkinan käyttöjärjestelmäkiintiö jo täynnä. Toiseen se tuskin menee sillä se ei pystyisi erottumaan kilpailijoista ja sillä ei olisi kontrollia enää alustasta eikä sen aikatauluista. Olisiko sen järkevää ostaa Palm? Suhteellisen halvalla se saisi oman käyttöjärjestelmän jonka päälle se voisi kehittää sähköpostipalveluitaan ja muitakin palveluita? Palm ei selviä yksin ja voi olla että RIMMikään ei selviä kauaa yksin omillaan. Sen lienee pakko tehdä jotain lähitulevaisuudessa ja mitä pidempään se odottaa sen tukalammaksi saattaa tilanne muuttua.

Kovasti tuolla USA:ssa levitetään huhuja että Nokia ostaisi Palmin. Eihän noissa huhuissa ole järjen hiventäkään, mutta aina välillä tuo vedätus tuntuu onnistuvan ja kurssi ottaa kunnon nousupiikin. Vedättäjä saa osakkeensa myytyä.