30 July 2009
The $99 heavyweight
In the past couple years, even months, we’ve seen a sharp decrease in the price of smartphones. With these high power devices more and more becoming necessities instead of luxuries for mobile consumers, and revenue from data and content based traffic rising, carriers are becoming more willing to subsidize these pricey devices to put them in reach of the average consumer. And recently the $99 price level, previously reserved for more value oriented feature phones, has been shocked by the introduction of a true smartphone heavyweight: the iPhone 3G.
Even with other carriers beginning to increase value priced smart offerings, such as the newly announced $99 BlackBerry Storm, the value per dollar ratio still leans heavily in favor of AT&T and its iPhone 3G. To back that up, here is quick overview of the best phones currently available on the value menu:
Verizon
- LG Dare – A resisitive touch screen feature phone offering haptic feedback and a 3.2 megapixel camera. Limited by a smaller 3″ screen and lack of a true smartphone OS. Plus the web browsing experience leaves much to be desired
- BlackBerry Storm – RIM’s first foray into touch screen phones running the standard Blackberry OS 4.7. While it carries all the enterprise friendly Blackberry features, it has been criticized for having a cramped keyboard and being sluggish.
T-Mobile
- BlackBerry 8820 – An aging offering from RIM now eclipsed by the Curve 8900. Usual RIM enterprise features, but suffers from a lack of a camera.
- Samsung Behold – Another resistive touch screen feature phone lacking a true smartphone OS. Has sub-par web browsing and lacks WiFi.
Sprint
- Samsung Instinct – A resistive touch screen phone lacking WiFi and with bad web browing UI. Also lacks sizable internal storage.
- Motorla VE20 – Barely deserves mention in this category. No full web browser, WiFi, or enhanced OS.
AT&T
- iPhone 3G – Capacitive touch screen device running the iPhone OS, with good web browsing experience, WiFi capability and sizable internal storage. Lacks expandable memory.
- BlackBerry Pearl 8110 – WiFi enabled trackball device with limited internal storage running BlackBerry OS.
This overview shows that there simply isn’t a contender to compete with the $99 iPhone 3G. As these prices continue to drop, smartphone penetration will increase and it will become ever more necesarry to have true smartphones available at this value menu level. And of course, this topic begs the question: How long will it be before we see the rise of free smartphone offers? At that point the feature phone may become obsolete and this current value price level may be reserved for even smarter, heavier hitting devices.
1 Comment | 
Apple, BlackBerry, smartphones | Tagged: AT&T, BlackBerry, iPhone, LG, Samsung, Sprint, Storm, T-Mobile, Verizon | 
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Posted by Brad W Hagedorn
14 July 2009
With the announcement today that the Apple App Store has reached a cumulative 1.5 billion downloads, it continues to track towards an estimated 3.2 billion downloads by year’s end. And with a $99 iPhone now on the market, this number could be even higher.
At this rate, Apple should reach 2 billion downloads the week of September 4th, 2009.
iPhone app growth
Leave a Comment » | Apple, apps, iPhone | Tagged: app store, Apple, apps, iPhone | Permalink
Posted by Brad W Hagedorn
2 July 2009
Orange UK announced their imminent release of the new TG01 today, confirming the first major debut of the world’s first Snapdragon phone. The TG01, which runs WinMo 6.1, looks amazing on paper with a 800×480 pixel touchscreen and driven by the monster 1GHz Qualcomm core. There’s just one problem: it’s too big!
Toshiba TG01
Image via Gizmander
Over the past year or so we have seen the convergence of smartphone form factors to a few dominant designs. And of course, one the most import important pieces of a design is its dimensions.
While the height, width and depth of a phone may seem like arbitrary design considerations dependent upon internal componentry, it turns out that there a few golden dimensions that make a phone pleasing to use. Consider the two places a phone is almost always located when on your person:
- In your hand
- In your pocket
In your hand the width primarily matters, since you grasp a phone vertically to make use of your thumb. This ‘golden’ width seems to be around 60mm. Any wider and it feels bulky and awkward. Any skinnier and it is hard to manage.
In your pocket height is the limiting design factor, since your leg performs mostly vertical movement. The ‘golden’ height here is about 105mm. Any taller than that and the phone begins to noticeably jut into the leg when moving around, sitting down or climbing stairs.
When it comes to thinness, you can be too thin; much below about 9 or 10mm it becomes hard to radius the edges enough to avoid them digging painfully into the pads of your fingers.
With this in mind, let’s see how today’s leading smartphones stack up against the TG01:
Evident from both the 3D and front views of these five phones, the TG02 is simply too tall and too wide. Even the iPhone is slightly too tall, being 5mm over the ideal 110mm height.
Toshiba can focus on their ultra high resolution screen and lightning fast chipset all they want, but without a design that satisfies the customer’s tactile senses a phone will never be a mainstream success. This becomes ever so important with almost all major industry players converging on these ‘golden’ form factors.
They’re also not going to be helped in the smartphone wars by shipping as rumored with WinMo 6.1, against devices running iPhone, WebOS or Android which are also good-looking ’supermodels’.
2 Comments | UX, WinMo, smartphones | Tagged: Form factors, Qualcomm, Snapdragon, TG02, Toshiba | Permalink
Posted by Brad W Hagedorn
2 July 2009
Fans of the PSP have long been speculating as to the development of a PSP phone, but with Engadget Mobile reporting that Sony plans to assemble a team charged with creating a PSP and Sony Ericsson handset hybrid, speculation suddenly seems more like reality. The potential for a PSP phone is clear when we compare the iPhone & iPod Touch’s growth with early sales of the PSP.
Global growth of the iPhone, iPod Touch and PSP
Calling the iPod Touch a comparable, if less gaming centric, match to the PSP we see that their early growth is quite similar. What is interesting though, is the gap between iPod Touch and iPhone + iPod Touch sales, which represents sales of iPhones. Since the iPhone is essentially a Touch with phone capabilities, this gap is the oppotunity that Sony may be missing out by having a PSP, without having a PSP phone.
But has Sony missed the boat on a gaming/phone hybrid?
As I see it, this is most likely the case due to three severe short comings of the PSP.
- No touch screen
- No accelerometer
- No App Store
Hardcore gamers may spit out statistics on the PSP’s superior graphics and the iPhones lack of “real” buttons for a gaming platform, but as recent developments show, this means less and less. Just look at the Nintendo Wii, which has crushed the PS3 in terms of sales using a graphics card that looks like a Vespa compared to the PS3’s Ducati-like hardware.
Everything is about user experience now, not refresh rates and polygon counts. That’s where the touch screen and accelerometer differentiate the iPhone. And the 3GS’s beefed up processor and graphics are starting to level the technical playing field.
Plus, the PSP is still based on the distribution model of customers buying hard copies of games, whereas the iPhone has moved on to the App Store model. Who wants to take the time to go to a store to purchase a game when it can simply download to your device and never be lost? (Though the PSP Go could change this).
While Sony may not have seen the omens until now, its traditional software developers have. Namco entered the iPhone market back in 2007, and even gaming gaint Blizzard is stepping into the arena.
So Sony, that development team may be a stopgap to bleeding customers to the iPhone as a game platform, but it is not a long term solution. You’ll need a major overhaul of both hardware and software distribution systems to remain relevant in a converged mobile gaming world.
Leave a Comment » | Apple, gaming, iPhone | Tagged: Apple, gaming, iPhone, iPod Touch, PSP, Sony, Sony Ericsson | Permalink
Posted by Brad W Hagedorn
Michael A M Davies
Brad W Hagedorn
Moe Kelley
Amy Bullard Davies
