Yesterday someone stole my daughter’s new smartphone from a school locker. On Friday, a good friend’s iPhone 3GS disappeared from a car dealership, while he was talking on it. Both stories, which go oddly together, are cautionary tales about social media, cloud computing and the risks of identities stolen with the hardware.
Yesterday, several Wall Street analysts swallowed their pride and iPhone sales projections after the first four days of official iPhone sales in China amounted to 5,000 units. Whoa, 5,000? I’m stunned China Unicom sold that many.
In little more than an hour, Nokia World convenes for two days in Stuttgart, Germany (local time there, 9 a.m.). It’s an event that many US analysts, bloggers or journalists will look at with disdain. If hype were the only measure of success, Apple would be the world’s largest handset manufacturer. But for all the iPhone bark—much of it coming from the United States—Nokia has got way more bite. Not that most Americans will hear about it.
I’m mad at Apple and Nokia. Apple has the best mobile software and services platform anywhere. Nokia offers the best hardware platform—granted, HTC closes in. This difference has forced me to choose one company’s smartphone over the other, leaving behind dissatisfaction with the compromise.
It’s the question to answer based on comments I received to yesterday’s post about Apple CEO Steve Job’s return from medical leave. Some commenters scolded me—OK, one said I should commit suicide—for the tone of the post. Many others asserted that Apple has always improved products incrementally.
Apple is once again up to its media manipulation tactics, or so I allege. Surely I can’t be the only person seeing just how transparent was yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Steve Jobs liver transplant story. The timing, on day of iPhone 3GS launch, helps protect Apple’s share price and deemphasize an important fact: Steve isn’t really coming back this month.
What have I got to say about iPhone 3.0, available today, and iPhone 3GS, coming on Friday? Here is my quick take.
