"the iPhone has moved from being an advantage to not doing so becoming a serious disadvantage. The product and its high up-front costs are “hygiene factors” for operators. The sine qua non status means that it can still be priced with the extraordinary built-in margin shown above"

"The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is planning to start the process of ditching [3,800] Research in Motion’s signature BlackBerry wireless phone largely in favor of the iPhone" - primarily on functionality grounds. The NOAA, also switching, cited BB infra cost.

Good thoughts and nice collection of others' analysis on Flickr at 8 and Instagram. (Instagram remains a foreign country because I am an iPhoneless Android.)

On the perceived design disconnect between Apple's hardware and software: "Inside these unsentimental, rational, economic designs, Apple has delivered an increasingly sacchirine series of software releases. [...] The addiction to skeumorphism seems to say that it's a deeply held aesthetic position. My question is: why does this approach not extend to the devices themselves? Why not make a wooden case for the iMac, like those hideous Sony TVs from my childhood? Or why not a case that makes the computer look like a typewriter?"

On the perceived design disconnect between Apple's hardware and software: "This is a terribly disappointing renunciation of possibility on Apple’s part, a failure to articulate an interface-design vocabulary as “futuristic” as, and harmonious with, the formal vocabulary of the physical devices themselves. One of the deepest principles of interaction design I observe is that, except in special cases, the articulation of a user interface should suggest something of a device, service or application’s capabilities and affordances. This is clearly, thoroughly and intentionally undermined in Apple’s current suite of iOS offerings."

Well-organised iPhone 4S grey marketeers

"The only reliably predictable consequence of Android will be the postponement of displacement of the existing brands by the low-end entrants. [...] iOS needs to be seen as not so much a phone platform but a computing platform [...] By this thinking iOS lives only by improving more rapidly than anything else in dimensions that redefine the basis of performance."

10 pin numbers are used by 15% of 200,000+ users of an app. Sequences, visual patterns, dates: 1234, 0000, 2580, 1111, 5555, 5683, 0852, 2222, 1212, 1998

Some apps "have placed controls in ways that best match the ergonomics of our hands while holding them, particularly the saddle joint of the human thumb, with its ability to roll in a particular almost-45 degree sweep"

"The Redlands Police Department relies on iPad and iPhone as two-way multimedia conduits that allow them to keep an eye on people, places, and situations that need attention."

"writing cross platform code is far quicker and simpler than writing native. The results, for very simple apps, are almost as good [...] If you[r] app relies heavily on that last 5% of Wow factor to set it apart, I would still choose native [...] you would need a really good reason not to go native [...] I will probably use Titanium again, for rapid prototyping, but would write natively once the prototype was finalised.

Pretty good RIM numbers, with comparisons to Apple. Gross marging of 44+ and 50+ respectively: everyone else lags massively.

"The orthogonality of growth vs. margin points to the effect of innovation in this market. In a non-commoditized market (i.e. one where usable improvements in a product are quickly absorbed and highly valued) high growth and high margins are correlated. In a commodity market (i.e. one where improvements in a product are neither absorbed nor valued) growth can only come at the expense of margins." [Or is the market segmenting into two, one much closer to being a commodity.]

Nice, possibly over-generalised: "The problem seems to be that, like in Palm’s case, mobile computing is a game for big companies. If you ask why Palm and RIM became uncompetitive you get two different reasons. Palm could not do hardware and distribution well and RIM can’t do software well. But these reasons have remedies which neither company can bring to bear: resources and processes. Palm did not have the resources for distribution and production and RIM did not have the processes to be a software platform company"

"For these latecomers to smartphones, it’s clear what Android offers: a chance to stay in the game"

An app in appstores that buck the low-margin high-volume trend. (Do entertainment apps suffer in comparison to productivity/work ones by having more price pressure and shorter market lifespans?)

"PhoneGap is an open source development tool for building fast, easy mobile apps with JavaScript [...] still taking advantage of the core features in the iPhone, Android and Blackberry SDKs, PhoneGap is for you"

Consumer electronics economics.

Appstore strategy

These look great. (If there isn't a similar thing for BlackBerry app design I am going to make one.)

Curiously-named Heath-Robinson hardware keyboard glove for iPhone that "results in faster typing".

Pay per feature/pay for hosting DIY app-builder for iphone. Interesting model.

Microblogging by current geography rather than by buddylist.

"'developing military software for iPods that enables soldiers to display aerial video from drones and have teleconferences with intelligence agents halfway across the globe,' and snipers are already utilizing a ballistics calculator"

iPhone and sensors-in-world

"If you change your mind about the newly pasted data, just shake to display a menu asking if you wish to undo the paste" - shake to say no/undo/reset is a very natural interaction, nice. Also crystallised a problem I had with the BB Storm: the UX felt like the accelerometer drove everything, rather than being judiciously applied.

iPhone app usage drops with time, ie: we seek novelty rather. "Alerts. An application that reminds you periodically (at your request, of course) to use it, will get re-used" Alerts as tips?

Free interactions - ie fiddling, playing rather than tasking, goaling...

Panoptiphobic applications to confirm your worst fears."designed for informational and entertainment purposes only"

Impressive depth on the evening landscape sketches.

IM with pictures, sounds etc.

"Isn't [Apple's success with app discovery via a mobile app] a pretty strong endorsement of application as a route to online content, rather than the web?"

Good, though very much lessons learned from the perspective of being a web2 dev team - those coming at iphone from mobile would probably write a different set of lessons.

Non-mouse interaction and the web.

Enterprise-style data and asset mgmt (eg BlackBerry's remote mgmt) heads to consumer.

Colleague alexlaurie hasn't regretted switching from BlackBerry to iPhone for a second. I still fear touch screens without haptics.

""applications may not be designed or marketed for real time route guidance," as well as a number of other applications like emergency services" - probably to defend against competition from or future partnership with eg TomTom.

BlackBerry's iclone. Rumours of 4G (but perhaps unlikely given that RIM only just looking at 3G now?). Shame no slide-out keyboard.

Needing itunes installed on the desktop to do app syncing seems like a roadblock for enterprise. And 12.5 days standby? - not with gps on, surely (it EATS battery).

"iPhone brings anything new to the table. It has a great user experience, but that's all" - macfans are getting exercised by this and offering it as symptomatic of enterprise(IT)'s total disfunction. Other readings are possible.

Confusing smartphone sales data recently: growing or dead?

VC economics and suggest that RIM and Apple need to grow their smartphone sales, else risk losing developer interest to feature phones and new platforms eg javafx.

iPhone SDK quite popular: "Apple already has one developer for about every 40 iPhone users"

Nice piece by BBJ. Regardless of the component pipeline, because "Apple executed first, and beautifully ... they own it, culturally", it makes more sense for Nokia to claim they 'copied with pride' than to point to their own consiserable work on touch ui.

Nice rant on iphone from mouthy Beattie. Though I 'd side with the retard on edge being better than non-hsdpa 3g, in some parts of Europe anyway: the connection negotiation/cell-handoffs/contention can make even gprs quicker for some uses.

Mobile Choice awards: Nok N95 beats iPhone to ultimate prize (pleasant surprise); BlackBerry Curve beats E90,other to smartphone prize (less surprised - it's excellent); VM wins best customer service again (no surprise - they work so hard on that).

Apple sold half as many smartphones as RIM in July07 - very impressive achievement given RIM's growth in the last 2 years.

Interesting comments on the impacts of and messages sent by accelerated price cuts.

In which the question is asked: is satisficing satisficient?

Good case study in unintended consequences and the need to orchestrate and reevaluate many business process when yoking something new to something existing...

In smartphone purchases and purchase intentions, RIM and Apple doing well, Palm sliding. "the number one reason given by those planning to buy a RIM phone was the 'Influence of Their Employer'; while those who plan to buy Apple cited 'Quality'"

"RIM’s biggest North American customer just crippled one of their enterprise devices in favor of a consumer device that supposedly doesn’t compete with the BlackBerry" - we should be surprised that AT&T is defending their 5yr exclusive on iphone.

Makes point that hopping onto wifi isn't always easy/cheap when you're out and about. Will be interesting to see usage for the new BlackBerry 8820, which is 2.5G+wifi rather than 3G+wifi, like the iPhone.

Gigantic iPhone review concludes: it's awesome but wait till they're fixed/upgraded it.

Bizarre apopheniac mapping of iPhone internals to seminal Duchamp painting, but it's all good when Duchamp's around so, um.... good for Dan Farber for bringing 20thC art history to the tech sector.

Not much (yet), says Cellular news. Will be interesting to see how soon Apple supports IT-dept-approvable secured, push mail, and whether RIM drops licence fees for BB service. And whether iPhone will sneak its way into orgs the way IM did.

"Besides the potential accumulation of complexity in a single device, the main source of the downside stems from the fact that you are interacting with a picture of the ideal device, rather than the ideal device itself."

"display is made of a sturdy glass, not plastic, and while it did pick up smudges, it didn’t acquire a single scratch [...] error-correction system didn’t seem as clever as the one on the BlackBerry [...] handle corporate email using Microsoft’s Exc