Smalltalk with James Robertson

According to one analyst firm, the rumors of a looming iPad shortage are just that: rumors:

Apple is on track to build 5 million iPads in the first half of 2010, according to FBR Capital chip analyst Craig Berger. "We believe various news articles and competitor notes calling for a build delay were just false alarms," he writes. The company, of course, has now set an April 3 launch for Wi-Fi versions of the iPad, with 3G versions to ship toward the end of April.

I guess we'll find out soon enough; pre-orders start this week.

Technorati Tags: iPad, apple

This is one of the funny things about the way patent infringement suits tend to go - you can aim it as well as you want, but you may get results you didn't expect. Consider Apple's auits against HTC, based on their multi-touch work. They seem to be aiming at Google, which could end up empowering... Microsoft:

Even before the lawsuit, handset makers were having second thoughts about Google, which with the Nexus One had become a direct competitor. Now their faith in Android as the easiest and cheapest way to counter the iPhone has been shaken, says Reiner. The unintended consequence, he suggests, is to send them into the arms of Microsoft (MSFT) and Win7 Mobile.

"Our checks," writes Reiner, "indicate that Microsoft has been quick to sniff out this burgeoning opportunity and has begun to aggressively promote the strength of its own IP portfolio, as well as its willingness to join battle with customers that come under IP attack."

I had been thinking that Microsoft was out of the handset running, but this Apple campaign could actually give them new life. Whether that's better for them than just trying to, you know, actually compete better, is an open question.

Technorati Tags: apple, patents, iPhone, htc

Spotted in Engadget

Word from Apple is out -- so get your credit cards ready. The iPad will be launching on Saturday April 3rd (and on the shelves, er... display tables at Apple retail stores), but you'll be able to plunk down cold, hard cash for it in just a week. Pre-orders will begin on March 12th for the US version (non-3G) for that April street date, with the 3G version coming in late April

I suspect we'll be in that pre-order queue - my wife has expressed a pretty keen interest in this device :)

Technorati Tags: apple, iPad

I've run into the iPhone download limit myself - Civ Revolution for the iPhone is just over 10 MB, for instance. So it's welcome news that they are upping the (3G based) cap to 20 MB - but that's not going to help much with full shows. An hour long TV show, at compression rates that give you a decent viewing experience, is still in the hundreds of megabyte range. And that's stadard def - HD is a whole other kettle of fish.

This whole capped bandwidth model is going to have to change if mobile devices are going to be used to consume streaming video, or even just "not on wifi" video...

Technorati Tags: iPhone, bandwidth

So what does this mean - an alliance of phone companies putting together a new app directory?

Twelve of the world's biggest phone networks — including AT&T, Orange and Telefonica — will announce their rival technology tomorrow to Apple's App Store. The combined audience for the app platform will be 2 billion customers. Phone manufacturers Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson are also part of the alliance.

If it's going to be "cross phone", does that mean that these are going to be browser based apps? Because I can't see what else would cross the multiple physical architectures involved. I'm also not sure how you would install these apps, at least on the iPhone. For an android device, an alternative store is simple, but for the iPhone? This bears watching.

Technorati Tags: mobile, phone apps

I ran across this chart os Microsoft's revenues, and the line for "entertainment and devices" struck me:

It makes it clear to me that the XBox was a loss leader for eons, and is only now starting to show a (small) profit. In the grand scheme of things though, it makes me wonder - just how much does that division matter to Microsoft? When things start getting hairy for them (as I expect they will) - what will they decide? If I had to guess, if and when that time comes, it'll be a group that might be spun right out of Microsoft...

Technorati Tags: xbox, games, microsoft

Than a mosquito death ray?

While I really like the Xbox, I just got an object lesson in why the Zune is going nowhere fast. I submitted "Industry Misinterpretations" to the Zune marketplace to be listed with their podcasts sometime last summer. I just received this in email:

Did you know that your podcast is now featured on Zune.net, available to hundreds of thousands of visitors? We are pleased to include your content in our catalog.

Every time I've submitted a feed to Apple, it's taken 2 days or so to get an approval. For all the complaints about Apple's approval process, for a podcast publisher, it seems to be way, way better than Microsoft's....

Technorati Tags: podcast, zune, apple, iTunes

I think the dominance of the iPhone in terms of developer mindshare - as opposed to actual deployment statistics - tells me that having a well known and well understood deployment environment drives things quite a bit. Dare Obasanjo links to these smartphone sales stats:

1. Nokia: 39%
2. RIM: 20% (Blackberry)
3. Apple 15%
4. HTC: 5%
5. Other: 21% (Samsung is expected to make a major jump this year)

The more interesting piece of information is this:

According to these stats, the iPhone OS is actually the major source of traffic for the mobile web in most continents except for Africa and Asia.

Which tells you why there's so much focus on the iPhone - for good or ill, that's where the eyeballs are...

Technorati Tags: iPhone, mobile web

Amazon recently bought a small company that builds innovative touchscreen devices, leading to the thought that they might well have a next generation device on the way that would leapfrog the iPad:

Unlike traditional capacitive sensors, our patent-pending system can detect any object -- not just a finger -- and can determine how much pressure is being applied to every point on a sensor simultaneously. IFSR sensors are natively multitouch, use less power than capacitive sensors, and are much less expensive to produce, making them a highly disruptive technology with widespread market applications.

Now if they were able to add design sensibility to that tech...

Technorati Tags: e-reader, kindle, iPad