Mountain View Cellphones

7/26/2010 by mountainviewcellphones.com

Apple has gone bananas. They are now posting “fake” test results for other competitor phones in an effort to show that their phone is as bad as everyone else’s device.  Sure the signal changes but not dramatically and that doesn’t necessarily effect the end result of a dropped call.

PC Magazine tried to recreate Apple’s result and found the Apple tests were overhyped.

 I think this is a serious lack of executive judgment here.  They are covering up their poor engineering decisions with smoke screens.  This one falls all on Steve Jobs and his executive team.  They goofed.  They are trying to avoid an all out recall.  People pay good money for a phone that doesn’t work…it’s a recipe for disaster. 

I’m wondering if these moves indicate in anyway the level of returns for the IPHONE 4.0  (or just the “I” as it’s not really a good “Phone”).  For whatever reason, customers now have an excuse to just give it back without justification and there may be some intense pressure on ATT as well. 

Lastly, this IPhone 4.0 antenna issue may really mess up the launch date of the IPhone 4.0 on Verizon and other carriers.  No internal testing group in Verizon or probably Sprint will allow this mess up to get to their customers without a rework of the device or inclusion of a fix from the point of purchase.

As the video makes clear (from the PC Magazine test) Android’s star just keeps on rising with the free advertising.      

7/24/2010 by mountainviewcellphones.com

Android continues to gain market share in the smartphone space. According to the Google Blog, Android is having about 160,000 activations per day. Apple Iphone sales from their quarterly report were 8.4 million.

8.4 million / 91 days in quarter = 92,308 Iphones per day.

From these two standpoints, it’s clear that the Android is outpacing IPhone 1.7:1. This is very consistent with the information in the comscore reports about market share.

This pace is only going to increase towards the favor of Android with the launch of Droid X, 4G Epic, and other Android versions on all carriers globally (Samsung and LG versions in particular).

Comscore states we have about 49.1 million smartphone users in the USA, 24.4% Apple or 11.98 million. Android had 13% or 6.3 million. Android was gaining market share at a global rate of 67,692 per day. If this was all in the USA, this gap would be closed in about 84 days, or about 3 months. However because we are comparing global figures versus US market shares, we will make a range estimate for the Android overtaking market share and the largest smartphone platform.

The minimum is 3 months (as above). We will assume that 50% of this market share gain is attributable to the USA given the large success of Android here. That would put the date of parity market share in December of 2010.

So starting January 2011, we should have parity of market share for IPhone and Android, each garnering about 25% of the market (assuming Blackberry continues to hold its share).

It’s fun how this timing is planned with the IPhone launch on other carriers rumored in 2011.

7/15/2010 by www.Mountainviewcellphones.com

Apple’s got more major problems but now they are very large strategic problems as well.  Android is eating away at IPHONE, quickly.  We all know about the consumer reports and RF problems with the IPhone, and Apple will probably come out with a fix for it tomorrow, but that is really not the biggest issue (although it’s big). 

The biggest issue is that the world has caught up and is surpassing the IPhone.

1.  IPhone lost smartphone market share in the latest 3 month average by comscore.  Android grew by 4%.   By a sheer feature list comparison, phones are on par or surpassing the IPhone.  Other traditional manufacturers like HTC, Samsung, Motorola, and LG have better camera’s and video capability, faster and faster processing speeds in software and hardware, and definitely faster networking speeds for the devices with Sprint 4G and Verizon LTE coming.  Droid does better.  Android leverages the vast manufacturing expertise of Motorola, Samsung, and LG.  The Empire Strikes back so to speak.  Every carrier has a Droid now and soon every carrier globally.  At this rate, Android will have same market share as Apple by 2011 and will surpass Apple in 2011.     

2.  Technologically, Android phones are now on par and improving at faster rates and address more form factors and niches of the market.  According to Google Blog, there are 160,000 daily activations of Android devices globally.   This is DAILY…and this is GROWING.  Apple’s current theory of one Phone to rule them all is quickly falling apart in the reality that many users prefer different physical form factors and different carriers.  As Apple grapples with this fundamental problem, it may mean lower margins, more R&D, and bigger overhead costs of managing these processes.  Apple will need to come out with more form factors…it happened at RIMM, it will happen at Apple to.  There are low end markets, high end markets, big fingers, long finger nails, rough environments, data hogs, Internet addicts, social networking addicts, super texters, etc…all sorts of people.  Apple can decide they are going to give away the niches to all the other players or they can decide to go after each major one.  If they don’t go and compete in the niches, they will lose even more market share faster and jeopardize their current leadership in the app space (the crown jewel).  If they do go after the niches, this will reduce their economies of scale and profitability and increase the management headache 10.0x to work with many carriers, many form factors, and many different phone engineering projects running concurrently in house.  Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.  This is the game that the traditional cellular manufacturers play well in, look at the form factors available on Samsung, numerous.  They are 1-2 years ahead of Apple in being able to produce many different products and form factors and niche phones profitably.  This plays into the strengths of current phone manufacturers and against Apple.        

3.  Developers love Apple but even here Apple is clamping down.  With moves to not allow developers into the club if they also promote Droid will not slow Droid down.  It is either going to involve illicit deceit or creative legal fees to avoid Apple’s contract for developers, while they produce for both Droid and Apple, or they will just leave Apple altogether and bet it all on Android.  Developers want to develop for the largest platform, and currently Apple is that platform, but it’s losing share fast.  Android has it’s own warts in that manufacturers can modify it to much to not allow one application to run on many different devices, but I think for now manufacturers and smart enough to not kill the golden goose.

4.  The Wild Card.  Android TV.  I think Google is going to get it sooner or later and they probably have already.  Here’s my prognostication, Android will be the platform for all three screens (TV, Browser, and Phone).  Currently at Google there are separate teams for Android and Chrome, but this can change and will probably change.  There is just to much strategic value in being able to link a platform across all various form factors.  An Android developer can build something for phone that works on TV and on the computer.  It’s the ultimate development platform across different “types” of devices as well as many form factors for those devices.  It’s pie in the sky thinking but it’s really not that far away and Google has the resources to make this a reality.  Developers will have to think not just about mobile but the whole shebang and Android will be the most obvious choice.  Apple is attempting a similar strategy with Apple TV and the unique Ipad and will be a contender in this arena as well.  Again…Google is reaching out to partners who can manufacture in myriad ways and to have them adopt Android.  Manufacturers gain by having a great flexible OS at little if any cost and they can gain a competitive advantage for their products (currently). 

It’s an exciting time.  Apple’s got a lot to think about and execute on.  Are they going to remain a niche player and do their own thing? or will they go into more form factors to address niche markets better.

The mad scientists over at Google’s HQ are at it again! Google Goggles, a new Android only app developed by Google, allows users the ability to not just search from text, not just search from sound, but search from sight! Scan business cards and have the information automatically entered into a contact. Take a picture of a book cover and up come search results, reviews, places to purchase it, etc. Imagine taking a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge and Google search results immediately pop up. The possibilities are endless. The potential limitless. For a full breakdown of features and a video walk through, click here.

by  www.mountainviewcellphones.com  6/10/2010

It’s pretty clear from the ground here that EVO is the best smart phone on the market right now.  Sprint and this phone will get another shot up once 4G is released across the largest metropolitan areas in a few months.

Here are some prognostications.

1.  People are chucking their IPhone.  As I predicted in the past with Android Taking over…Android and HTC and Sprint’s 4G make an incredibly competitive solution.  A year or two years ago, we never had much reason to use our number transfer machine to move phones from IPhone to anything Sprint.  Now, our phone transfer machine is getting a little work out to transfer contacts form IPhone to Evo’s. 

2.    The value proposition for an IPhone just got worse.  Although ATT will claim that caping data at 2GB for users is a friendly thing and try to sell it as saving money, it’s complete BS, and IPhone users know it.  This couldn’t have happened at a worse time and pretty much pissed all over Steve Job’s 4G phone announcement.  Steve will try to do it again with 4G IPhone, but without a 4G network is it really 4G?  With ATT blowing against Apple, it’s time to get the IPhone out to other carriers.  From all the other rumors swirling around, it will be Verizon first.  Once the IPhone is on another carrier, ATT wireless will just implode.  

3.  ATT is falling apart already.  I just got out of a business meeting with a customer that wanted to dump ATT because their business rep. consistently missed 3 appointments with him, not to mention their billing was completely messed up.  With Verizon steadily chomping away at the high end and Sprint eating at the value segment, ATT is in big trouble.  The IPhone was the only thing holding the wireless ship together, now that this is slowing, the company has shifted to trying to bundle everything together in an effort to reduce total cost to the customer and deliver the worse service over more product lines.  It’s laughable what is going on.  I’m surprised any businesses stick with them.  As sales from Sprint actually get subscriber gains, ATT will start to see subscriber losses or at least no gains by year end.  ATT will have subscriber losses for certain if the IPhone sells at another wireless carrier.

4.  Android is unstoppable.  On top of gaining market share at incredible speed, the 2.2 Froyo is phenomenal in performance and the introduction of push data framework will work wonders to improve access to corporate data from the cloud.  The openness of the Android framework will win over Apple’s propreitary system.  It’s Windows vs. Mac 2.0 again.  Once Android TV launches, the TV & Mobile Phone & Internet trilogy will be the next big nexus to drive Android phone sales.  With ATT’s blood and treasure so linked to Apple and keeping them “happy”, they will for certain sacrifice Android growth and potentially miss this next big nexus to drive mobile growth in the coming 2 years.    

ATT is a big ship.  It can take on a lot of water before it sinks, but sinking the ship definitely is.  It’s desperately trying to find another engine for growth thru U-verse…we will see how this goes when cable guys continue to deliver far superior speed and media availability.

We did it. We are not working on our next Groupon campaign. Keep a heads up for our next Groupon deal.

We are now at 44 people and climbing. Busy day today. Many people responding with “Yes.” Let us know if you want to be part of the revolution.   Help us get to 50 and everyone’s got $50 off.  Help us get 56 more and everyone gets $60 off. 

htcevo@guideservices.us

We are at 40 sign ups. We are looking for another 60 to get everyone $60 off, another 10 gets everyone $50 off. Tell your friends, we are almost there.

by www.mountainviewcellphones.com  5/19/2010

There are a few cool things that the HTC Evo will do with the HTC Sense overlay.  These are just nice touches.

1.  Polite Ring.  So when you pick up the phone the ring volume automatically reduces

2.  Mulitple people widgets for different contact groups in the phone

3.  View merged contacts from different sources (Google-Facebook-Exchange)

4.  View todays agenda quickly thru a widget

5.  Friend Stream integrates many social networking areas into one feed

6.  Flash Lite….Flash 10 compatibility…yeeehaaa!!!  (sorry, the Texan in me). 

7.  Email filtering tabs…not sure how this works yet

8.  Widescreen, cinematic, weather display widget

These are great new enhancements that HTC provides to improve Android above other Android implementations.