So now we’re talking about war between the two giants for the last stand in the mobile computing market.

But my dear fellows I believe that this is just a battleground and not the whole war that is going to be fight on several grounds. One battleground, perhaps the most strategic for the final victory, will be cloud computing and the deployment and access to web services (software as a platforms).

This is going to be the ultimate battle and mobile computing is just a tactical battle of this war but not the main story that still has to written.

Stay tuned.

Yes, because they are going to invent something new that doesn’t exist yet.
A whole new paradigm with a new business model annexed.

The whole tablet business is going to be something different than we might expect.
Please forget about the hardware (that indeed will be engineered with innovation in mind) and let’s focus on the OS side.

Of course that will be the Mac OS as in the iPhone and that matters a lot.

But if I can add my piece of speculation, and by the way today is xmas and I will consider it as a little gift from you, here is how I imagine the whole thing:

The web is a platform, cloud computing is the way to go propelled by a software is a service (web apps) business model.

Google, in this new game, is leading and Chrome OS is its next move to sublime a perfect business model.

Jobs is too smart to ignore all this and to passively assist to the shift from desktop software to web apps in favor of Google’s kingdom.

So the Mac tablet or whatever is going to be called is going to be a “port” to the cloud where content and web services are king (latest business deals with CBS and Disney are a demonstration, pending interest in QUATTRO is another).

The underneath OS is going to be the real suprise: I expect to see Jobs pull out another rabbit from his hat (Mac OS X 10.7 Clouded Leopard???).

Apple has secretly (I like to image it…) developed a new version of his OS designed for the tablet and aimed to use web apps downloadable from the Apple store or deployable directly from the cloud.

Os mine just a fantasy consequence of my holidays drinking or a clear and present challenge that Apple is going to deal with in 2010?

For the moment my best wishes of a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

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 .

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!