AT&T: 73% of Smartphones Sold were iPhones

AT&T reported quarterly results this week. Of interest:

AT&T Q2 2012 Earnings

  • 3.7 million iPhones were sold out of 5.1 million total smarphones sold (approximately 73%)
  • Sequentially, iPhone sales dropped 14%, but a drop should be expected given the age of the iPhone 4S and the growing expectations for a new iPhone in the next couple of months.

Wow.

Microsoft: Fighting Apple on All Fronts

Back after a long weekend (on both ends) with family and friends. I wanted to touch on this now older news...

Microsoft's Ballmer Throws Down Gauntlet Against Apple

These quotes stood out as odd in Ballmer's statements.

We are trying to make absolutely clear we are not going to leave any space uncovered to Apple
We are not. No space uncovered that is Apple’s.
But we are not going to let any piece of this [go uncontested to Apple]. Not the consumer cloud. Not hardware software innovation. We are not leaving any of that to Apple by itself. Not going to happen. Not on our watch.
There's a real danger with this line of thought. An obsession over what a competitor is doing can cause you to lose focus on what you should be doing. Do you really want to challenge a competitor on every front? Should you not choose what you know you can do well and do that, rather than have your competitor force you to consume resources following into markets you may not be prepared for?

Vanity Fair: Microsoft's Downfall

Thanks to DaringFireball for linking to this article:

Microsoft's Downfall

One point the article touches on is Microsoft's steadfast belief in basing everything off of the Windows or Office platforms. I was thinking of this during the Surface announcement. They made a point even in that announcement to drive home that Windows was the center of everything they do and Surface would continue the trend.

Microsoft has always suffered from the fallacy that success equates to popularity and therefore, in the case of Windows as a brand name, in brand recognition and loyalty. Does anyone outside of Microsoft think that "Windows" is a powerful brand in terms of loyalty or inspiration? Recognizable of course. For corporate IT it certainly carries weight as a known quantity. But I think few Windows users have an endorphin rush (aka happiness, elation, wonder, creative flow) at the thought of using anything related to Windows. I've seen indifference, acceptance, and apparent cases of Stockholm syndrome. I do know people who love Windows but they are by far a minority.

It's puzzling then that Microsoft would so adamantly try to tie Windows to everything they do. Even in diversifying their business they keep everything chained to this legacy brand. I think they would do better to break from Windows, even if it was still the same underlying software... they could have done this with Metro, maybe on a tablet called the xPad to play off a brand that has some cachet among consumers.

I think if the Surface gains traction in the consumer space, it will be in spite of Windows, not because of it. It will be because it is compatible with legacy systems they have been forced to use at their employers. Again, it could be successful for the same reasons Windows was, but not because it's popular.

Google IO 2012: Project Glass - A dose of reality

Some people may believe that Google's planned release of Project Glass to a small set of third party developers means that a full product launch is just around the corner (today I heard someone postulate about 1 year from now).

I was thinking this project is in its infancy and it would be several years before we were likely to see even a hobbled version released to the general public. This article at MIT's Technology Review by Farhad Manjoo, where he interviews Thad Starner of Google, solidifies my thinking:

You Will Want Google Goggles

At the moment, the biggest stumbling block may be the input device—Starner's miniature keyboard requires a learning curve that many consumers would find daunting

That is, it would fail utterly if it shipped with a small keyboard for input so...

The best input system eventually could be your voice, though it could take a few years to perfect that technology.

That statement resembles the ever present claim that in five years the voice recognition problem will be solved for general computing input. It will happen, but it will be slow in coming.

One last bit:

His tiny display is connected to a computer he carries in a messenger bag

So... were the glasses used at Google IO hobbled? Were they not full versions with computer attached or did I miss the attached computer bag on everyone that was wearing the glasses? This leads me to believe that the reason they couldn't demo the glasses doing anything except for photo and video capture was because they weren't full versions. And the sexy demo would have been crushed if they had shown a demo of the glasses attached to a full sized computer to do anything that was actually interesting.

I completely believe this kind of tech is coming and will be generally available some day, but if you're one of the hopeful thinking it's coming next year, you'll be sorely disappointed.