THE JOY OF THE SMARTPHONE

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In my last article I spoke about how far this industry has come in such a short amount of time. One of the biggest changes has certainly been the smartphone.

Now the term smartphone can mean different things to different people. To me it means it has the ability to connect you to your world all of the time. By “your world” I mean…. E-mail(personal and corporate), Calendar, Social networking, banking, documents, pictures, blogs, and multiple other applications to make your life easy.

If it doesn’t do all of these things well, its a feature phone. Meaning it has some cool things about it (maybe a touch screen, a picture app, and a keyboard for texting) but its not the “work-horse” that many business-people need.



Now that I have defined the term…. Lets talk about the competition and where I see it all. The Operating system to me is the boss. The main competitors spend millions of dollars perfecting theirs and trying to trump the other guys.

The top OS’s on the market (in my eyes) now are …. Apple iphone OS, Android (Google) , WebOS(Palm), Blackberry, and Windows Mobile. In other markets Symbian is huge but not so much in the US. Having had the ability to travel to the United Kingdom, I can tell you they are a finicky bunch. It will take them a little longer to let go of their Nokias Also Bada (Samsungs proprietary OS is soon to launch).

Windows Mobile and Palm really started the whole Application thing many years ago and both are still important in todays market. Heres my rundown of each.

Apple- They have taken touchscreen phones to a new level and set the pace for the market.
When the iphone launches many business professionals switched , but were disappointed that the OS was not robust for their world. There were multiple problems with Corporate e-mail. It was almost a feature phone at launch. years later, the iphone still reigns supreme however now good ole Steve Jobs must deal with Network issues that the iphone has created. They have so much data being used that they are bogging down the network in some markets. AT&T should have been prepared,Verizon will be prepared.

Palm- WebOS was a HUGE leap for Palm. They needed it . After the Palm OS nearly died, they switched to Windows Mobile (you will see I feel about WM below) Palm basically invented the PDA market in 1998 (I may be a little off but Im close) with the Palm Pilot. After some stiff competition Palm had to WOW the crowd…and that they did at CES winning best of show. WebOS uses something called “synergy” to connect your online world together (email, web calendars, facebook contacts, etc.) Starting with Sprint as their exclusive carrier, they have sold a ton of the Palm Pre’s and recently released the Palm Pixie. WebOS has a bright future and works VERY well on Sprints network. apps are pouring in so there is something for everyone here.

Windows Mobile- My biggest disappointment. I want to run Microsofts UI team and make this product better. In every experience I have had with Windows Mobile they were sluggish memory hogs. It’s too “fat” of an OS to run on a mobile device. It’s not user friendly except for the fact that it has applications that are familiar to most (word, excel, outlook) . Even the next generation looks boring compared to the others on the market. Steve Balmer….WAKE UP! It’s not like you don’t have the cash to make sure you have the finest team in the world creating the next version.

Blackberry. I have been a fan for years and years. It works well, my email is delivered in a nice and fast way, and its user friendly. The Blackberry devices have some of the best keyboards on the market. I hated hated hated when they got rid of the click-wheel on the side. Now they are using the “pearl” ball on the center of the device(ya I have broken about 5). In newer models they are moving to an optical pad. Recently Blackberry app world was introduced with little fanfare. The application list is good , but not up to par with some of the new guys. After using Blackberry for so long I can sum it up in one shot…. It’s boring me. It’s works dont get me wrong, but it’s not exciting anymore. Believe me when I say they wont go away. They are still a strong company and I’m sure they are looking to innovate shortly.

Android- Watch this one closely. Google is so incredibly powerful in everything that they do. This will be no different. The T-Mobile G1 was nice, but the interface gets better and better (they recently launched 2.0) and the app catalog is growing each day. It’s open source and the techies of the world are creating more and more for it. They will be a huge competitor with Apple and Palm. The carriers are really grabbing a hold of the Android phones and embracing its power. Sprint , T-Mobile, and Verizon are in the game with AT&T soon to follow.

In summary, one of the largest determining factors and sales pushes for people has been Applications. Looking back at some of the first smartphones There were apps, but mostly Personal organization…(Calendar, contacts, tasks, maybe email). Today you can do everything from order movie tickets, facebook, Banking, and yes…you can make your voice sound like Akon with that annoying autotune pitch. Apple has capitalized on this with a catalog of 80,000 apps and over a billion downloads. They have no problem telling you that they have the most. And it works!

Smartphones are a huge part of people lives and is one of the highest growth pieces of the wireless industry as a while. Besides providing unique equipment, fantastic apps, and a better user experience…they are increasing carriers data revenue year after year. With 4G in the wings and faster processors on the horizon…Smartphones are here to stay and they will get better and better.
CS