iParadise Lost

Back in the hey days of 2001 I was fascinated to use my Palm iiic and Nokia phone to download email, it worked in a clunky sort of way but it was now 7 years ago a smart phone and pda combination of sorts.

Looking at the latest corporate smartphone figures one can see that after the 70% + market share of RIM comes Apple with iphone 14% and third with now 11% is Palm. With the software and development backing they had earlier in the decade it makes good MBA reading on how they lost their lead and how their transition from PDA to phone took them so long.. What is more they ditched their own netbook the Folio before the first net books had arrived nearly two years ago.

So much of Palm history seems to say before its time and now I would be fascinated to see the figures of simple PDA's as they must be shockingly down. Looking at their product line there 7 models with various functions and system softwares. Why they pulled in Windows mobile to their phones I will never know after so much time and trouble spent developing the Palm OS and community.

When John Rubenstein joined from Apple a few back with his experience on the iPod and original iMac projects I thought some magic product dust may be sprinkled over the company.

But with no touch screen phone to date you wonder what's going on here is a quote from CEO Ed Colligan this Autumn:

"While we're still in the midst of our transformation and have challenges ahead, we are bringing outstanding new products to market, hiring world-class talent and preparing to launch a new platform that will usher in a new era at Palm."

Now that we have the iPhone and Blackberry Storm, what is the next state of the art Palm going to look like and does anyone really care ?

Last week I wrote on the topic of the Mac Mini and put forward some ideas of a combo machine with an Apple TV built in. This cheapest Mac on the market option has a real following of innovative users and over the weekend I noticed this rather nifty addition to the Mac range -

Welcome to the Mac Mini Pro



GIven that the Mini is the last of Apple's desktop range still to use plastic why wouldn't the slick lot at Cupertino want to have the whole line up in shiny sliver by the beginning of 2009...

Ps This machine was actually made out of the innards of a Macbook inside an G-S350SUA Aluminum 3.5" USB & 1394 & eSATA External Enclosure l

For the past three years the phone that invented the slick and slim form for mobile handsets has been the Motorola Razr. Not anymore this third quarter the iPhone took the top spot.

Here are the top five phones in the US

Apple iPhone 3G
Motorola RAZR V3 (all models)
RIM Blackberry Curve (all models)
LG Rumor
LG enV2

In total 32 million phones were sold in this third quarter 15% down on last year. So what this means for the iPhone ? Features and functions had better keep rolling out for it to stay on top and with Motorola now taking on android software expect them to want to wrestle the top position back but boy are they going have to spend on R and D to do so.

In my mind and even in their physical looks, the Apple TV and Mac Mini have been very close cousins for a while now. With the Apple TV fans craving more functionality and more firepower to drive and manipulate these large 1080i TV images surely the time has come to merge the Mac Mini (long due for an update) and the next generation Apple TV.

All hail the Mac Mini TV - a living room powerhouse for the next generation of digital media presentation ?

Any thoughts ?

Utz

When Apple bought PA semi last year the usual rumour mills cranked up with expectation that Apple were going into the mobile chip business. It furthered confirmed it would not be using Intel's Atom processor in the next generation iPhone and iPods. More recently Apple has hired Mark Papermaster to lead its Iphone engineering team. Papermaster was a VP at IBM and one of the chief architects of the previous Apple chip darling the PowerPC.

What will this give to Apple? Well, it may allow them to differeniate from competitors who all buy chips from similar outlets like Samsung. And I would look to a sea-change is advertising and promotion of the next iphone and ipod with new speed wars between the rivals.

Apple's new iPhone business now sees them as the no 3 phone maker when ranked by sales value and last quarter they beat RIM in sales, pretty damn impressive in the time they have been in the market. It is now one of the core business revenue drivers within the company.

In my view the need for the iPhone to process incoming emails a little faster and to be able to switch apps without having to go in and out of the software itself are musts for the next steps for the iPhone development.

Utz