More news from Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress: At a keynote by RIM’s Mike Lazaridis, he says that BlackBerries will get an all-new Web browser based on the same WebKit rendering engine used by the iPhone, Android phones, and Palm’s Web OS. It’s due later this year.
This demo shows both that the new browser looks like giant leap over RIM’s current, rudimentary one–and that the fact that most BlackBerries have small, non-touch screens still impacts the usability of browsing.
What, another BlackBerry outage?
Bloomberg is reporting a BlackBerry outage that affects e-mail for every BlackBerry user–not a unique occurrence. Given that companies with BlackBerries run their own servers, I’d love to see a coherent explanation of why RIM’s technology is such that a single point of failure can cripple its entire customer base…
(UPDATE: RIM says the outage is over.)
Apple’s iPhone continues it’s march toward market dominance, a survey released by ChangeWave Research on Tuesday indicates. From June to September, Apple’s share of the market jumped from 25 to 30 percent, while competitors RIM and Palm basically stayed unchanged over the same period.
RIM’s share fell 1 percent to 40 percent, while Palm’s share remained unchanged at 7 percent. It’s clear from these figures that the Pre has done little to fix the company’s woes, adding weight to the calls of “failure” from some industry watchers.
(It could also be due to the fact that the lady on those commercials is just creepy looking, but I do digress.)
The news gets even better for Apple: Over the next 90 days, 36 percent of those surveyed said they plan to purchase an iPhone in that period, compared with 27 percent for RIM and 8 percent for Palm. In other words, the iPhone’s share isn’t done growing yet.
Part of this success may also have a lot to do with customer satisfaction: Apple completely kills the competition here. 74 percent report being satisfied with their devices, with the next closest, RIM, coming in at 43 percent. You have to go to sixth spot to find Palm, with only a third satisfied — behind competiors LG, Sanyo, and HTC.
Screenshots of Google’s music service?
Google’s music partners: LaLa, iLike
Windows 7 pre-selling like hotcakes.
Bing to get Facebook, Twitter?
Time Warner Cable security hole.
RIM working on Webkit browser.
Gizmodo reviews new white MacBook.
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The Boy Genius Report says that it is “pretty much confirmed” that Research In Motion will integrate full Flash and Silverlight run time support into its BlackBerry Web browser. If true, that would be a significant step in the transformation of smart phones into functional mini computers.
Flash and Silverlight are not just about games and streaming videos; the run times power Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). Adobe is promoting Flash to be used as a front end for business applications, and Microsoft is positioning Silverlight for business apps.
At SD Times, I have covered component makers that are releasing Silverlight controls (data grids, charts, UI controls) for line of business applications. After all, Silverlight is a subset of the .NET Framework, which is used for business applications.
With HTML 5, Web applications will become even more common, because it will have a built-in application container. Other techniques such as AJAX will also enable Web applications to run within a phone’s browser. (Nokia is betting that standard AJAX Web applications will become popular across its entire portfolio of S60 devices.)
Supporting Flash and Silverlight, assuming it happens, will bring a greater variety of applications to BlackBerry devices. Developers will be able to run their applications on Blackberries using the skills that they have today –without having to learn any specialized RIM technologies. That’s the way it should be; skills should be portable.
By embracing Flash and Silverlight, RIM would break out of the walled garden that smartphones have existed in, making itself more attractive and accessible to application makers. Consumers will win by being able to do more with their devices.
A TechCrunch article citing research by SquareTrade, a company that sells insurance plans for smartphones, says that Apple’s iPhone is “an accident magnet.” I wouldn’t have drawn that same conclusion.
SquareTrade’s report, “One-Third of iPhones Fail Over 2 Years, Mostly From Accidents,” should be viewed with skepticism. For starters, while SquareTrade used a sample of many thousand smartphones covered by its warranty products, it didn’t cleanse its data (for instance by removing unlocked phones), and performed no statistical tests. Rightfully, the report includes the disclaimer:
SquareTrade has made efforts to ensure that the data we present is correct. SquareTrade makes no warranty, express or implied, about the accuracy of the data. SquareTrade is an independent third party, and has no affiliation with any of the handset manufacturers cited in this study. Users of the information in this document acknowledge that SquareTrade cannot be he liable for any damages whatsoever to any individual, organization, company, industry group or representative arising from the use of this data.
TechCrunch seized on the report’s findings that over 20% of iPhones have been damaged in the last 22 months, with cracked screens being the leading cause of damage. But the SquareTrade report doesn’t report on damage rates for other phone models, so it’s impossible to judge whether iPhones are any more likely to crack (or croak altogether) than other brands. Phones, after all, are more likely to get dropped than desktop PCs, HDTVs, or printers–no matter who manufactured them.
The study does say that iPhones are “significantly more reliable” than phones manufactured by Palm and RIM (9.9% of iPhones cited in the survey malfunctioned, versus 15.3% of BlackBerry and 19.9% of Treo phones). And it says that the iPhone 3G is a more reliable handset than the original iPhone.
My statistics are a bit rusty, but a common test called a T-test would have shown whether there was any significance difference between the iPhone’s likelihood of being damaged versus its competitors. The same goes for its supposedly higher manufacturing quality. Bottom line: It’s worth thinking twice before drawing conclusions about the iPhone from a single survey or news report. Colorful graphs always don’t tell us much.
Busy day for phone news…
Best Buy’s instant Pre rebate.
Unsubsidized, the Pre is $549.
Various small Google Reader tweaks.
iPhone sales double over 2008.
BlackBerries are selling well, too.
Virgin America offers Wi-Fi everywhere.
Dell shows an Android netbook.
Never assume RIM is toast:
BlackBerry Curve outells the iPhone.
Two trends conspiring against Microsoft.
Navigon exits North American market.
“Houdini’s” a great phone name.
MySpace formulates its turnaround strategy.
I got real excited when I heard about the new Facebook application 1.5 for BlackBerry phones, thinking it would provide the same functionality as is delivered on my iPod Touch or my wife’s iPhone. Question is, does it even come close to the iPhone interface, or does it leverage the strength of the BlackBerry?
I instantly appreciated the following improvements on my BlackBerry Bold:
So the new FaceBook 1.5 BlackBerry application does leverage BlackBerry’s strengths. This is impressive to me as I believe for my uses, BlackBerry has a superior universal inbox, calendar, and address book. But I still want some of the items available on the iPhone, such as the application bar and the ability to easily view photos, links, the live feed, notes, and other apps. I can’t have it all!
If you have a BlackBerry and want to give the new Facebook a spin, try it out here. Here are a few images of it in action:
