Technology
One iPhone To Rule Them All Daniel Lyons 06.30.08, 12:00 AM ET Forbes Do you remember last summer's iPhone hysteria, when hordes of nitwits camped out for days on sidewalks outside Apple Stores so they could be first to purchase an overpriced, underperforming smart phone? At first I found the spectacle kind of funny, but then I found it depressing. Those people weren't camping out for the phone. They were making a statement about who they are. I'm sure that makes Steve Jobs and his marketing minions happy, but there's a whiff of sadness to the whole thing. How empty must your life be to drive you to seek meaning from consumer electronics? We're about to witness the ugliness all over again. By the time you read this, Apple should have announced the second-generation iPhone at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco on June 9. Once again idiots will be camping out on sidewalks. And once again Apple will have leapt ahead of its competition and made life even more difficult for rivals in the already overcrowded smart phone market. In less than a year Apple has sold more than 5 million iPhones, according to market researcher IDC, which estimates Apple had a 19.2% share in the U.S. smart phone market in the most recent quarter, placing it well behind Research In Motion (maker of the BlackBerry), which had 44.5%, but still ahead of Palm, with 13.4%. Market researcher NPD says iPhone was the top-selling smart phone in the first quarter of 2008, ahead of the BlackBerry Pearl and BlackBerry Curve. The most amazing thing about the phone market may be simply that, despite the iPhone's numerous flaws, a year after its arrival the other players still can't make an appliance with greater sex appeal. LG and Prada built a touchscreen phone, but it was an overpriced dud. Sprint's new Instinct phone from Samsung is okay, but it's no iPhone. Nor is Verizon Wireless' LG Voyager. Nokia's N95 has a better camera than the iPhone, plus GPS and an FM tuner, but the N95 isn't as intuitive. Nobody does ease-of-use like Apple. ... http://www.forbes.com/technology/forbes/2008/0630/062.html ******************************* * POST TO [EMAIL PROTECTED] * ******************************* Medianews mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
