March 9th, 2010 by Mike
The last few years in the smartphone business has been a remarkable time, with some huge shifts in the market. Think back to 2003, an eternity in the mobile market, and realize that the whole concept of a smartphone did not exist. There simply wasn’t such a thing. In fact, what is even more remarkable to me is that the company who launched the whole market segment we now know as smartphones was Palm. That’s right. Believe it or not, Palm (and Handspring) invented what we all know as smartphones today, at least in a commercial sense. Prior to the launch of the line of Treo products, there was nothing out there that resembled what we now know as a smartphone.
Fast forward a little to 2007. At the end of June 2007, the smartphone market was rocked again with the introduction of the Apple iPhone. Apple, who had not previously been in the phone market, came out with a groundbreaking product. Sure, it was a smartphone, but it was one unlike anything the market...
Tags: smartphone
Posted in Mobile Apps, Mobile Devices | No Comments »
March 1st, 2010 by Chris
Living and working in the high-tech mobility eco-system, we get to see and work with the latest technologies and applications. Some of the concepts we are working on today, both internally and with our clients, take mobility to a higher level in terms of usability, utility and even the desired ’coolness factor’.
At the same time, we must remember that the latest in high-tech isn’t required to provide value. As John D. Sutter points out via an interview with Tero Ojanpera, a senior vice-president at Nokia, there is great utility in the simplest of apps. Interestingly, the interview ends with Ojanpera exclaiming the details of an upcoming high-tech mobile app that will “blow your mind”!
http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2010/02/11/ted-2010-how-cell-phones-will-change-the-world/
Posted in Industry News, Mobile Apps, Mobile Devices | No Comments »
February 24th, 2010 by Mike
For those of you not in the wireless industry on a daily basis, I am sure you are wondering what the title of this post is all about. What in the world is a dumb pipe? Let me attempt to explain. Over the course of many years, networking in general has used the term “pipe” as a metaphor for the network. The idea behind this is that networks move bits, much as pipes move water. If you have a broadband connection to your house, you have a fairly big pipe at least for your downloads. At my house I get about 9.5 megabits per second on downloads. Compare that with several years ago when I had a 14.4K modem that actually supported something more like 10 kilobits per second download speeds. That was definitely a little pipe…maybe even a straw by today’s standards.
OK, so now...
Tags: Dumb Pipes, Smart Pipes
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February 10th, 2010 by Mike
Well, it’s been a while since I posted, but that’s not because nothing has been going on in the mobile world (was that a double or triple negative?). There continue to be changes in device popularity and availability which is having an impact on the smartphone market. For instance, back in September of last year Android was just beginning to gain traction with a couple of Android phones and about 8,000 applications in the Android Market. The only mobile device Apple made was the iPhone. And most of us would not have had a clue as to what AT&T and Verizon’s 3G coverage maps looked like.
Today there are about 25,000 apps in the Android Market, and there are several Android phones available, including one from Google itself. Apple just recently announced the iPad (insert your favorite product name joke here), which is truly a mobile device. It’s relatively small and light, and supports not just WiFi, but also cellular data connections. And...
Tags: Industry Growth, Market Share
Posted in Mobile App Dev, Mobile Devices | No Comments »
September 15th, 2009 by Mike
The last couple of weeks have been interesting in the world of smart phones. Motorola/T-Mobile, HTC/Sprint, and LG have all announced the upcoming release of new Android smart phones. If you don’t know much about Android, that’s not surprising. It is a smart phone operating system announced with a lot of fanfare quite a while back. It is backed by Google, and supported by several large wireless industry players. The idea is to provide a platform that will run on a lot of different phones, from different manufacturers, and different carriers, making it easier for developers to write software that will support a wide variety of users.
The problem to date has been that you could get any Android phone you wanted as long as it was the G1 from T-Mobile. Yep that’s right. For all the hoopla,...
Tags: Android
Posted in Mobile App Dev, Mobile Apps, Mobile Devices | No Comments »
September 2nd, 2009 by Mike
According to a press release yesterday, Microsoft has finally driven a stake in the ground and will be delivering new phones with Windows Mobile 6.5, as well as the Windows Mobile
Marketplace on October 6th. Windows Mobile 6.5 is the newest version of the Windows operating systems for smartphones and related devices that has been promised since very early this year.
If you take a look at what Microsoft is doing with this launch, it is pretty aggressive. In North America alone, it will be released on the 3 largest carriers in the US, along with about half a dozen device manufacturers. Pretty impressive, and...
Tags: app store, Windows Mobile Marketplace
Posted in Mobile App Dev, Mobile Apps | No Comments »
August 12th, 2009 by Mike
iPhone Apps are no longer just driving sales for Apple and application developers. They are now starting to drive revenue for products other than the software itself. Take a look at this article to see more about this interesting trend.
One of the specific applications discussed is an application being distributed by Pizza Hut. Their application allows mobile ordering, and has already been downloaded 150,000 times since July 15th. The move to mobile business applications is gaining momentum.
Tags: Apple, Pizza Hut
Posted in Mobile Apps | No Comments »
August 5th, 2009 by Mike
Fierce Wireless had an interesting article about Verizon that I got a chance to read yesterday. In the article, they note that Verizon has dropped the price on almost all of their smartphones to $99 or less with a 2 year agreement. The speculation in the article is they are doing this to clean out their inventory in preparation for offering new devices that will be coming soon. While I think there is validity to this claim, I think there is more to it than that.
Tags: Fierce Wireless, smartphone, Verizon
Posted in Industry News, Mobile Devices | No Comments »
July 27th, 2009 by Mike
I met with the owner of a restaurant last Thursday and had something completely unexpected happen. The gentleman I met with has been in the restaurant business for quite some time, starting out with Subway, then rolling out his own pizza franchise concept, and now finally launching his own pizzeria. I was there to do a little research for the product side of our business. We talked for about an hour about several ways mobile technology could assist him in the operation of his restaurant, and also how it could help him be more in tune with his customers.
The discussion was very helpful to me, and I believe to him as well. However, about midway through our discussion something completely unexpected happened. This gentleman held up his
Tags: blackberry, iPhone, PC, Pre, Restaurant, Windows Mobile
Posted in Mobile Devices, Mobile in SMB | No Comments »
Twenty-four wireless telecommunications companies united to announce the