Palm execs hinted at some surprising trends in their quarterly earnings call yesterday, including a community-driven approach to application discovery and the possibility of licensing the Palm OS to other manufacturers.
Although the Palm Pre has had a million applications downloaded, so far there are still only a few dozen apps because the device's software development kit (SDK) hasn't been made fully public. The company is still "tweaking some things" in the SDK, Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein said, and will open up the SDK to "thousands" of developers within the next few weeks.
More intriguingly, though, Rubinstein hinted at some sort of community-driven element to Palm's app store which will set it apart in the future.
"As you get large numbers of applications, you know, discovery and finding applications that are interesting to you becomes more and more difficult, and so we hope to use much more of a community approach to solving that problem," Rubinstein said.
The iPhone 3GS has been a huge hit for AT&T, and although they aren't saying how many customers they've stolen from other carriers, AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph De La Vega said they had "hundreds of thousands" of pre-orders.
That puts a lot of pressure on AT&T's network (which we reviewed recently), but the carrier is ready for it, AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said. They're doing three major things to improve their coverage and speeds, one of which will have a huge positive effect on coverage in cities like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
That major upgrade is known as "3G on 850 Mhz." In busy cities, some dropped calls and signal problems come because the 1900 Mhz airwaves that AT&T mostly uses for 3G are totally saturated - they're trying to cram too many iPhones into too little space.
Across much of the country, though, AT&T also owns big blocks of spectrum in the older 850 band, which was once used for AT&T and its predecessors' older TDMA service. Verizon Wireless is the other big 850 Mhz carrier. AT&T has been refitting their 850 Mhz equipment for 3G. As 3G 850 comes on throughout the rest of this year, the effect will be like going from having 100 people crammed into a conference room, to having the same population in a spacious ballroom.
Unlocked phones are always a tough sell in the U.S. due to the high up-front pricing, despite all of their benefits. Nonetheless, Palm is doing its part to help by slashing the price of the unlocked Palm Treo Pro from $549 to $399, Brighthand reports.
That move could help spur sales for enterprise users, as well as global travelers that like to switch out SIM cards overseas and avoid paying horrendous roaming charges to AT&T or T-Mobile.
The Treo Pro is a solid smartphone even in unlocked form, as I found in my PCMag.com review. It's quad-band EDGE and tri-band UMTS/HSDPA device with a 400 MHz CPU, a reasonably comfortable keyboard, and some subtle but significant UI enhancements on top of Windows Mobile.
Sprint's subsidized version of the Treo Pro remains at $200 with a two-year contract--in that case, it's a tough sell against the stellar Palm Pre.
For more on Palm, Apple, Research in Motion, and other top handset vendors, be sure to visit Smart Device Central, PCMag.com's dedicated site for smartphones and other mobile technologies.
Research in Motion is soaring at the top of the U.S. smartphone market these days, but it had better watch out: A new study reports that 4 in 10 smartphone users would switch to the iPhone for their next purchase, while 4 in 5 current iPhone owners would buy another one, according to MediaPost.
Contrast that to the BlackBerry: just 14 percent of smartphone users that don't have one would switch to one of Research in Motion's handhelds for their next upgrade. "The findings highlight the challenges the
BlackBerry faces in stemming the iPhone stampede," said John Martin, the CEO of market research firm Crowd
Science, in the article.
The report said that the iPhone also beat out other smart devices for customer satisfaction in numerous other areas such as screen size, navigation, the ability to add new features, and video playback quality.
The iPhone 3G S may be one of the best handheld computers ever, but it has at least one annoyance: that extra space in the name. Contradictory citations on Apple's Web site, plus a Tweet from the Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro, show that Apple may be in the midst of changing the 3G S's name - to the 3GS.
"We just feel it looks better with the 3GS all together," Pegoraro quotes Apple's Greg Joswiak as saying.
Check it out. On Apple's iPhone page, the 3G S is still the 3G S as of 1:36 PM on June 22. But on their Hot News page and in a press release dated June 22, we're now talking about the 3GS. No extra space. A nice, tight little product name.
We'll try to keep our eye on this developing 3G S tory. You can read my full review of the 3GS S (?) at pcmag.com, where I give it one of the highest ratings I've ever given to anything.
T-Mobile announced their second Android phone, the MyTouch 3G, today. Based on the Google Ion/HTC Magic platform, the MyTouch 3G is a touch-screen, slab-style smart phone with improved multimedia features, Microsoft Exchange support, and some applications that will be exclusive to T-Mobile.
"This is our next Android phone. It continues our leadership with Android and the partnership that we've established with Google," T-Mobile CTO Cole Brodman said.
The MyTouch 3G will come in black, white and red. It has no physical keyboard, relying instead on the Android 1.5 OS's virtual keyboard for entering data. It features a 3.2", 320x480 touch screen, 3.2-megapixal camera, MicroSD memory card slot, and built-in video recording and playback capabilities. The phone connects to the Internet via T-Mobile's 2G and 3G networks, foreign 2G or 3G networks or Wi-Fi.
T-Mobile's pitch for the MyTouch 3G centers around the phone's customizability, focusing on features like the phone's wide range of available home screen widgets. While the phone will have access to the 5,000 applications in the current Android Market app store, Brodman said T-Mobile will offer some exclusive apps as well. One of them is Sherpa, a local search and recommendation engine that improves its recommendations based on a user's past history of requests.
T-Mobile's close relationship with Google also let them put Microsoft Exchange support into the phone while keeping the "with Google" moniker that signifies full Google approval of the device, Brodman said.
The iPhone 3G S went on sale at 7 AM today, and of course Apple fans lined up for their phones. The line-up at the flagship Apple Store on 59th Street in Manhattan was clearly less than Apple had planned, though. While there were about 100 people on line when I got there at 7:20, there were empty corrals prepared for more. Folks on Twitter are reporting the same phenomenon all around the country. Jason Hiner says there were about 100 people lined up in Louisville. Eric Zeman stood in a 30-person line in New Jersey. Rene Ritchie found a small line-up in Montreal.
The line-up seemed to be as much for media as for iPhone buyers, who this year had a home delivery option. (In other words, if you were on line, you were doing it to socialize, not because you wanted an iPhone.) Wandering around the scene, I bumped into CNN, Bloomberg, R3 Media, Xinhua and several local TV channels all interviewing the new iPhone owners. The usual crowd of ringtone merchants, phone recyclers and such were also trying to market their wares to both the iPhone purchasers and the media.
We'll have our full iPhone 3G S review on Monday. For now, you can see what I think of the new iPhone OS 3.0, whether the $99 iPhone 3G is a good buy, or read my roundup of all the existing iPhone 3G S reviews out on the Web.
The now-$99 iPhone 3G is a "year old product" that doesn't bother Research in Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie much, he said on a conference call with analysts today. Announcing that RIM had added 3.8 million new BlackBerry subscribers in the last quarter, Balsillie fended off analysts' questions about the new iPhone and Palm Pre by playing up the BlackBerry's efficiency and wide carrier support.
While Apple has just driven down the price of the iPhone to $99, RIM has "had lots of offers for the BlackBerry that have been free and $49 and $99 ... so I don't really fret those kinds of things," Balsillie said. RIM's commanding 55% market share in US smart phones for the past quarter was driven in part by a buy-one, get-one-free offer from Verizon Wireless. The company expects to add another 3.8-4.1 million customers over the next quarter, thanks to the new BlackBerry Tour (at left) which will be debuting with Sprint and Verizon this summer.
Parrying questions about RIM's substandard Web browsing experience and the number of third-party apps in the BlackBerry App World, Balsillie touted the platform's "fuel efficiency" and urged analysts to look at the BlackBerry OS, servers and network infrastructure as a "system." As more smartphone users come online, Balsillie said, they'll create more strain on networks, and RIM's multi-layered compression schemes let BlackBerries take the heat off the carriers.
The Apple iPhone 3GS and the Palm Pre may be running away with the buzz right now, but BlackBerry maker Research in Motion still leads in sales--by a long shot.
According to new IDC data, RIM has 55.3 percent of the U.S. smartphone market. Apple is in second with 19.5 percent. (At last check, Palm was still in the low single digits, but that could change markedly with the new Pre.) As CNNMoney.com points out, compared with the third quarter of 2008--just six months prior--RIM had just 40.4 percent, while Apple commanded a whopping 30.1 percent.
"The buzz about other signature devices can make people overlook RIM's success," said Ryan Reith, senior research analyst at IDC, in the article. Analysts cite RIM's business expertise, competitive pricing, and new lineup of consumer products as reason for the company's continued sales surge. One Gartner analyst said in the report that RIM shouldn't get too comfortable, because its UI is falling behind--something I'm inclined to agree with.
As is happening more and more with reports like this, there's no mention of Windows Mobile whatsoever--or, disappointingly, Android, which had plenty of promise out of the gate but appears to be stalled in the U.S. market.
T-Mobile today rolled out a new Windows Mobile smart phone and a Google Android teaser. The T-Mobile Dash 3G is a T-Mobilized version of the HTC Snap, a non-touchscreen Windows Mobile phone which replaces the successful Dash in T-Mobile's lineup. The Dash was sort of a BlackBerry-without-BlackBerry, an inexpensive smart phone focused on messaging that leveraged Microsoft's decent text messaging client and terrific Exchange e-mail support. The Dash 3G is the same, but better-looking and 3G.
T-Mobile says the Dash 3G will be available in July; they didn't announce a price.
As for that teaser, T-Mobile says they'll tell us about their next Google Android phone next week. We're pretty sure it's the Google Ion, aka the HTC Magic, which our editor Mark Hachman got some quality time with recently. You can check out his hands-on here on Gearlog.
The review embargo for the iPhone 3G S broke today, and all the journalists who have been holding on to their devices since last week can finally post their opinions. This year, Apple gave a relatively broad range of publications early access to the new phone; we've found a whole lot of reviews from three countries so far. We'll add to this post as we find more.
The general consensus is that the 3G S has some useful new features, but that it's not a blockbuster upgrade. The new phone is faster and has better battery life than the 3G. The improved camera and video editing capabilities are a big deal, and voice commands work well. But the phone loses points for still not supporting multitasking. Frustratingly, only CNET's Kent German seems to discuss the iPhone's phone performance and reception, which has always been one of its weak spots. He's not impressed with the phone's call quality.
We don't have our 3G S yet - we're getting ours along with the rest of you, on Friday. We'll have our independent view early next week.
The race to release new Android handsets has been a slow crawl, indeed. The deluge of new phone utilizing Google's open-source operating system has yet to surface in any way, beyond the multitude of promises from a number of phone and netbook manufacturers. T-Mobile, however, is reportedly working on its own follow up to the first--and still only--Android handset in the States, the G1.
According to The Wall Street Journal, more details about the handset--set to be called the myTouch 3G--will surface next week. Like its predecessor, the new phone will be designed by hardware manufacturer, HTC. The myTouch 3G will reportedly look a lot like the HTC Magic--with a touchscreen and no physical keyboard and a smaller body than the iPhone.
The phone's software will also feature some update, including a voice-activated search function. More details next week--probably.
Considering that the Palm Pre was designed in part by ex-Apple employees, and that its iTunes syncing function works by pretending to be an iPod, it was predictable that Apple would try to shoot it down.
The Big Fruit today released a very thinly veiled attack on the Pre's iTunes capabilities, in the form of a support note. While it never mentions the Pre by name, it's clear what they're talking about here.
"Apple is aware that some third-parties claim that their digital media players are able to sync with Apple software. However, Apple does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players and, because software changes over time, newer versions of Apple's iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with non-Apple digital media players."
In other words: we're going to do our best to break the Pre's syncing with our next iTunes update. When I've spoken to Palm, though, they've said in a similarly thinly veiled fashion that they're ready for Apple to do something like this.
On the heels of RIM's official announcement of the BlackBerry Tour 9630, both Sprint and Verizon have rolled out teaser sites for the hot new phone.
Sprint gave away some specifics of their launch, too. The Sprint Tour will cost $199.99 with a new two-year contract and $100 mail-in rebate, and it will include some Sprint proprietary services: Sprint Music Store, Sprint TV, Sprint NFL Mobile Live and NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile.
Sprint, Verizon, Bell and Telus are all remaining a little vague on their launch dates other than to say the phone is coming this summer, so if you want more details you can sign up on Sprint's or Verizon's sites. Check out our full news story about the Tour on pcmag.com.
Nokia today announced two new handsets set to debut before the end of the year. The smartphone wars got a bit more heated today with Nokia's announcement of the E72. The successor to the E71 adds 10.2Mbps HSDPA, a 5-megapixel camera, an optical navigation pad, and a 3.5-mm headphone jack. The phone is due out in the third quarter of this year for €350 ($489).
Also due out in Q3 is the 5530 XpressMusic features a 640 x 360 touchscreen, a 3.2-megapixel camera with LED flash, and built-in Wi-Fi accessibility. The handset is set to retail for €199 ($278).
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