Businessweek and the Google vs Apple war

According to my 2007’s post “The new mobile era” Google and Apple were going to make it in the mobile computing business. A couple of years later that prophecy (not too hard to imagine, indeed…) is supported by facts and numbers. Read the rest of this entry »

the Tablet and Steve Jobs’ next challenge

The web is full of speculations on the next Apple invention. Please note I didn’t write product but invention.

Yes, because they are going to invent something new that doesn’t exist yet.
A whole new paradigm with a new business model annexed. Read the rest of this entry »

Letter From Steve Jobs

From the Apple Media Advisory:

————————-

Juanuary 14, 2008

Apple CEO Steve Jobs today sent the following email to all Apple employees:

Team,

I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.

In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple’s day to day operations, and I know he and the rest of the executive management team will do a great job. As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out. Our board of directors fully supports this plan.

I look forward to seeing all of you this summer.

Steve

iPhone in Italy

Quoting its own press release: “Vodafone today announced it has signed an agreement with Apple to sell the iPhone in ten of its markets around the globe. Later this year, Vodafone customers in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey will be able to purchase the iPhone for use on the Vodafone network.”

Also this morning Telecom Italia has released the following statement: “Telecom Italia announced today it has signed a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to Italy later this year.”

No doubts that we’re talking about the 3G iPhone.

Still remains to understand:

1) when? (end of June?)

2) locked or unlocked?

Investigations are in progress…

Iphone Q4 2007 Growing Market Share

Quoting Seth Weintraub article: “During last week’s Enterprise/SDK Event, Steve Jobs and Co. took a few jabs at the #1 Enterprise smartphone maker, RIM. Here’s how it went down.

During the first few minutes of the presentation, Steve Jobs showed the U.S. SmartPhone Marketshare from the big manufacturers.

RIM 41%
Apple 28%
No one else even in double digits. Apple isn’t too worried about Windows Mobile or Symbian at this point. This is Apple vs. RIM.”

This is, at the end of the day, the trend I’ve predicted in my last post written last Dicember.

The new mobile era

What are the implications of the introduction of the iPhone in the mobile phone industry? What is coming next with the introduction of Android, the Google sponsored Alliance’s next open source Linux based mobile OS?

Well my own humble prevision is that the devices are going to be commodities as are today PC hardware (with the exeption of the Mac platform) and the battle will bend on the software side with only two possible models:

1) Apple iPhone and few other proprietary OSes (Blackberry and Windows Mobile for the business world, Symbian instead will be doomed by the iPhone on the consumer market);
2) Open source Mobile OS as Android or other Linux based OS fully available to the consumer and business users.

Android in particular will grow in the next years essentially in that segment of the consumer market left available by the iPhone price positioning (below $ 150) contributing to increase Symbians difficulties to follow the increasing innovation provided by such devices as the Gphone & iPhone.

If you don’t need an advanced phone for business purposes as a BlackBerry or a fancy looking gadget as the iPhone you can always swith to a basic phone for less than a 100 bucks and install Android: you will obtain a fully enhanced device for much less than the currently over priced 500 bucks Nokia N95 !

PS: take a look to this article published on Mon, 12/17/2007 .

Touch screen phone device

I’m wondering why, still today, with the availability of information introduced by the Internet, producers are offering mocking cellphones and consumers are buying them. Last night I had a pizza with my friends after our Thursday night soccer match.

This is a nice way to restore our friendship after 90 minutes of tough match where we battle diveded in two teams. So during our Pizza I couldn’t miss to observe one of my fellow companions’ brand new cellphone: the HTC Touch.
Well for almost the entire dinner this touch screen device was the main attraction and topic.
Frankly how can a lousy imitation of the iPhone, over priced (it is sold in Italy at 546 euro!), and featuring Windows Mobile 5.0, can attract the interest of tech-savy people as my soccer teammates? Read the rest of this entry »

Special Leopard launch event on October 26

Apple today announced that Mac OS X Leopard will go on sale Friday, October 26 at 6:00 p.m. at Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers, and that Apple’s online store is now accepting pre-orders.

According to what an Apple employee has told me this evening, a special Leopard launch event is expected on Friday, October 26 at 6:00 p.m. (no matter the time zone) at Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers. Soon an Apple press release should confirm this news.

Leopard is going to be sold for a suggested retail price of $129 (US)/€129 (euro) for a single user license.

See you at the Roma-Est Apple Store soon!

iPhone: nothing compares 2 u

The iPhone will soon be released in Germany, France and UK.

T-Mobile, Orange and O2 will respectivily sell the iPhone in the above mentioned countries.

For those, as me, based in Italy the iPhone is still the object of our dreams. But for me this dream, just for an afternoon, has become a reality!

Yesterday, infact, I had the chance to play with an iPhone borrowed by my friend Carlo: so, what is my first impression?

Well, I guess everything, from a technical and functional point of view, has been said by more qualified bloggers and experts.

I would like to simply say that nothing invented before compares to it. It’s just like a piece of alien technology felt on earth.