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Canaccord Bleak on Handsets, Sets Palm Target at $0
Nokia Introduces the N97 Smartphone
Nokia's New Product Blurs the Featurephone / Smartphone Divide
When it's a Nokia! There's a disconnect between so-called smart phones, and actual smart phone usage. By every measure, Nokia sells about half of the smart phones in the world, and yet, smart phone usage, as measured by internet access indicates very few people are using it as a smart phone. You wonder if usability plays a role in that. That's why spec lists are virtually useless in assessing the capabilities of a phone, those lists don't tell you how easy or difficult it is to use those so-called features.
Buy, Sell or Hold: Apple's Cohesive Strategy to Survive and Thrive
Question, your Chart 1, is that the installed base market share figure or is it the one year sales figures? Cause you state that Apple sold more than Rimm, and yet, Rimm is at 12% and Apple at 7%. A little disconnect between the chart and what you are talking about.
Data security - unless Apple is doing something different than what they announced in March at their press conference, I'm quite sure there is a "remote wipe" feature for IT departments. And, Apple announced a special program for corporations to allow custom app solutions. How is the cost, "lower"? You don't say. Is it because Apple's email server is more expensive than Blackberries? Oops, Apple doesn't sell a email server.
WalMart? You do know that WalMart has tried to sell music before, at 88 cents, and failed. What makes you think they'll succeed now?
Nokia's Ovi? It only comes on a couple of their handsets.
Google's G1 comes thru T-Mobile. They are #4 in a 3 carrier market. They have 3G service in how many cities? 20? AT&T has 3G in something like 280 cities. No matter how good the G1 is, the sellable market is virtually nil. How is the G1, "revolutionary&qu... Because it mimics the iPhone? You do realize that Android is built around a browser that uses WebKit. Who developed WebKit? Apple. As for "location services", you do realize that the iPhone has it, and many more apps that use it.
Open source means nothing to the consumer. If it did, Linux would sell better. It is just as easy for anyone to develop for the iPhone and the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The iPhone has over 5500 apps already. The G1? 50? More?
You mention the Tube, Bold and Instinct. The Tube is a joke, it doesn't use a capacitance touchscreen. The Bold's screen is too small. Did you see Sprint's latest numbers? I don't think people are buying the Instinct.
The Nuvifone was "launched" where? In a vacuum? I love Garmin, but the last I heard the Nuvifone was delayed until next year. And, turn-by-turn directions, apparently, TomTom and Garmin have developed apps for the iPhone, but are waiting for Apple to lift their restrictions on it.
In other words, you don't really know your products very well, otherwise, you wouldn't have cited a whole slew of criticisms that just don't hold very much water.
For an analysis that recommends buying, your conclusion is rather negative. Read some of Andy Zaky's analysis on SA for comparison. Also, read Roughlydrafted.com for some insight into the actual product side.
Revisiting the iPhone’s Browsing Market Share (Part II)
AAPL's Time For Greatness Is Now
Does a Mobile Internet Devices Market Exist?
I think Apple designed a MID, with its iPhone, but squeezed it into the cellphone category, exactly for the reason Dean cited. The MID market just isn't that big yet. The cellphone market is huge. Which one is a niche, and which one isn't?
As for my ideal device that isn't a desktop, laptop, or cellphone? I'd like something like the OLPC, 2nd gen mockup, where the touchscreen is on both sides of the fold, but smaller of course. In fact, I'd take the iPhone size and shape, and clamshell it, so that it unfolded giving you double the touchscreen, for when you wanted to surf the net, work on spreadsheets. Of course, when you flipped it closed, it would appear just like the iPhone does now. Interestingly, Apple has patented something like this, so I'm hopeful in a couple years we'll see something like this. Something small enough to be a phone, but also unfolds to be something that can replace a Nokia N810 or Kindle, or Netbook.
Don't Close the Line on Nokia Just Yet
Like write a piece on emerging smartphone trends, and then in 6 months when your points come true, then you can pat yourself on the back, and link to what you had written previously. Then you look smart.
Then you said, "The problem is that companies like Apple and RIM are selling their phones at break-even prices for the shear purpose of snatching market share from Nokia, which announced that it would not stoop to their level." Where is the evidence that Apple and RIM are selling their phones at "break-even prices"? Have you looked at their margins? Nokia didn't mention any companies by name, and the odd thing is that Nokia is the company that has been gaining market share by flooding developing markets with low prices. Besides, what I've heard is the Nokia comments were referring to Sony Ericcson, not Apple or RIM.
Then you said, "This aggressive approach from its competitors cannot last long and is purely a marketing scheme that will end." Please explain. How do you know that this is a marketing scheme that will not last long, if you don't even know who Nokia are talking about? We KNOW that Apple can't be the one, since they are making great margins on their product, so they can continue ad nauseum. I don't think anyone following RIM thinks their company is selling product at "break-even" so tell us, who is?
Then you said ,"Nokia’s new Symbian operating system is on par with the iPhone and Android, and will be able to compete with the best of them." How do you know Symbian is on par with OS X and Android? You do realize that Symbian is NOT "new". And, if Symbian were so great, why then, did they use Linux in their handheld device the N800 and N810? One would think that it would be an ideal platform for the power of Symbian if it were "on par" with OS X or Android.
Now, I can't say whether Nokia is a good buy or not, superficially it looks good to me, but your above reasoning for doing so, is sorely lacking in due diligence.
Are Global Smartphone Sales Poised For Takeoff?
Right now, we have a large category of phone called smartphones, but we need to start segmenting it. Just because a phone has a smart OS, does not mean people are actually using it much for anything beyond what a feature phone offers. I would say there are at least 2 segments: email phones and internet phones in the smartphone category. Email phones are the vast majority of Nokias and Blackberries. The sales of email phones may be slowing from the fast growth in the last couple of years. The other segment are true internet phones, like the iPhone and its copies, like Android. This is the hot segment where sales are growing quickly, and why everyone is trying to offer something in this segment.
The only way to truly measure share in this internet phone segment of the smartphone category is to look at internet usage. I mean, if you have a smartphone with web access but never use it for the web because it's so horrible, is it really an internet phone, or just an email phone? If you look at mobile internet usage, then the iPhone dominates already, and the rate of growth of mobile internet use is growing rapidly.
The bottom line, is that we need to segment the smartphone category because it makes sense, as there is a difference pre and post-iPhone.
As someone mentioned above, internet phones are replacements for a computer in many developing countries. I know, as I have a home in China. Everyone seems to have a cellphone, or at least half the 1.3Billion people do. Very few people have computers. DSL connections are lousy and slow. In fact, cell connections are more reliable. EDGE is fantastic, even in the countryside. 1/4 of the cellphone sales in China cost more than 500USD. They don't subsidize cells over there. Having an internet device that you can carry in your pocket is far more appealing in developing countries like China, than the idea of a laptop or desktop.
Nokia Gets No Respect Against Apple, RIM
Nokia Gets No Respect Against Apple, RIM
You said, "My hunch is that Apple has at least another year or two before Nokia gets its software act together. (And if Nokia doesn’t, then Microsoft, RIM, LG or Samsung will.) So, as when it faced Windows 95, Apple better have something up its sleeve to further advance innovations when competitors catch up to its first mobile phone act."
These companies have all had years and even decades to develop the best software they could, and they haven't. Where are they going to get the software chops now? Alot of it is structural. Can they build a great UI on top of the Mobile OSes they are currently using? That's a technical question, and as far as I've read, Symbian isn't going to work, why else did Nokia turn to Linux for its internet devices like the N800? WinMobile has been around for a decade and they're playing catchup. They can't shoehorn XP or Vista into a cellphone, so they've had to write a Mobile OS from scratch. How do they catch up to OS X which is the basis for Apple's computer, TV, iPod and iPhone OSes? Apple's OS structure allows them to develop faster, and more efficiently at lower cost, as they can share the costs over a variety of products. Look at Sony, Steve Jobs said a decade ago, that their weakness was software. It still is. The problem facing these companies isn't new, and yet, they've never addressed it. Look at Palm. They've had to scrap their OS and build another based upon Linux.
We know that Apple is not going to rest on its laurels. They are pushing PA Semi to come up with their own ARM design. They are pushing OS X into new areas with Open CL. They are rewriting Leopard for greater efficiency in Snow Leopard. They aren't standing still, just like the iPod, the greater conclusion is that the other companies will only get further behind, as Apple's software will optimize for its hardware, differentiating it even more. The fear for the other cellphone companies is if Apple is able to bring its great functionality to cheaper phones, like it did with iPods. Right now, Apple plays at the upper end of the smartphone market, sort of like Apple's first iPod was at the premium end of the harddrive-based MP3 players. Eventually they moved down to flash-based iPods and cheap shuffles, taking over 70% of the market. No one things Apple will take over 70% of the cell market, but if it takes a majority of the profitable segment, then the other cell companies are in trouble. They'll end up in the commodity segment, like Dell in PCs.
Nokia Is Taking on Google's Cell Phone Software Play
Didn't Nokia move its N800 platform to Linux, and not Symbian, because Symbian wasn't powerful enough? How does this inspire confidence in Symbian as a platform to compete with OS X or Android?