nerdhook

From Collins Stewart analyst Ashok Kumar (via Jim Goldman):

Meanwhile the field has become very crowded. Only five vendors – Apple, HTC, Nokia, RIMM, and Samsung – have critical mass. PALM is unlikely to have the scale and scope to be a player long term.

If Sprint does not match or beat AT&T’s subsidized iPhone price of $199, which translates to a subsidy in excess of $200, the Pre is DOA.

Apple will be showing the next major release of the iPhone OS on Tuesday, March 17th. If they follow form from last year, they will provide details on major changes within the OS and SDK, as well as give a glimpse into what hardware to expect next.

We’re bound to see much speculation over the next several days, but what will be most interesting is the hardware support required for this OS update. In particular, with regard to running applications in the background, I would not be surprised to see new hardware required: more memory, faster processor. Also, is the push notifaction system D.O.A.?

The other obvious need which this update almost certainly will address is organization. In other words, the proliferation of applications has led the home screen of most iPhones to be a jumbled mess, and frustrating to navigate. I’m intrigued to see what Apple has come up with to solve the current mess.

The day of the keynote at Macworld, I put the over/under right at 10 weeks for Apple’s next media event; looks like I hit it exactly.

Interesting question: what will ship first… new Apple iPhones with OS 3.0, or any Palm Pre?

Google has announced the availability of Google Sync, which will provide push synchronization for a user’s Gmail contacts and/or Google calendars.

Sync uses push technology (Microsoft ActiveSync©) to automatically synchronize your Gmail contacts (using the ‘My Contacts’ group within Gmail) and/or your Google Calendar events in the background.

This is a great feature for non-MobileMe subscribers, or any other user who still relies on tethered syncing to keep information up-to-date. No word yet on adding push Gmail to the mix, but there is no reason to think it is not in the works.

One issue bound to arise for many users is the current limitation of a single ActiveSync account configured within the iPhone software. So if you are using your iPhone in conjunction with your employer’s Exchange mail, for example, you probably are already utilizing that single ActiveSync account, and will not be able to add this Google Sync account.

I have run into this limitation previously in experimenting with other ways to sync Google calendar. I wanted to try NuevaSync for over-the-air Google calendar synchronization, but alas, keeping my work account configured is too important.

I have not been able to track down an official reason why the iPhone is limited to one Exchange account; perhaps it is a licensing issue.

Google is hosting 3 new tools allowing users analyze their broadband connection and help diagnose any problems which may exist (including BitTorrent throttling):

At Google, we care deeply about sustaining the Internet as an open platform for consumer choice and innovation. No matter your views on net neutrality and ISP network management practices, everyone can agree that Internet users deserve to be well-informed about what they’re getting when they sign up for broadband, and good data is the bedrock of sound policy.

The tools can be found on the Measurement Lab site.

In admitting they rushed the Blackberry Storm out the door in order to meet an artificially imposed deadline, RIM also has apparently seen the error of their ways with how the Storm keyboard functions:

RIM adds that it’s also expecting to fix the remaining problems with the Storm in upcoming patches and confirms a recent firmware leak which shows that the handset will abandon RIM’s longstanding SureType portrait keyboard in favor of a more iPhone-like QWERTY layout.

As you read right here back in November, inclusion of the SureType keyboard was a flawed design decision from the beginning. It’s good to see RIM willing to correct its mistake.

This episode also demonstrates the benefit of limiting actual hardware features and designing around a touchscreen; major changes to key design pieces can be updated through software, and users won’t be stuck with the odd SureType keyboard much longer.

The enlightened folks who serve in the US Senate have decided, with the blessing of the President himself, to delay the full switchover to digital TV here in the United States to June, instead of February 17th. The legislation is being drafted by John D. Rockefeller of West Virginia:

“The shameful truth is that we are not poised to do this transition right,” Rockefeller said in a statement. “We are only weeks away from doing it dreadfully wrong — and leaving consumers with the consequences.”

Certainly the manner in which digital converter box vouchers were made available has, at best, been handled poorly. But exactly how is a 4 month delay going to solve any of those issues? Will the government begin directly handing out free boxes instead of vouchers? Will the people who have not taken action up to this point be spurred on by their 4 month reprieve?

The bill would allow broadcasters to turn off analog signals before the June 12 deadline, and public safety agencies would be allowed to use those airwaves as soon as they are available. The bill would also allow consumers with expired coupons to re-apply for new ones.

So here’s the bottom line: consumers will have been bombarded with advertisements and publicity warning them about the switch to digital in February. Then mysteriously, that won’t happen en masse as promised. Instead, we will subsequently be bombarded with advertisements and publicity warning about the June switchover. However, some stations might start switching over sooner than that, it’s up to them.

Yes, this approach certainly seems as though it will clear up any lingering confusion. Nicely done.

UPDATE – The House of Representatives defeated the bill yesterday by a 258-168 vote (this bill needed two-thirds support to pass). Congratulations sanity. It is possible another bill requiring only majority support will be introduced next week; let us all hope not.

With Q1 results due out later this week, Starbucks appears set to axe up to 1000 jobs sometime in the next few weeks.

Apparently the return of Howard Schultz as CEO has lost any momentum it once had. Of course, any business so dependent on retail sales is hurting right now, and we most likely have not seen the worst of it yet.

Gene Munster, of Piper Jaffray, has finally come down from his lofty $235 share target to a more reasonable $180.

In a posting by Jim Goldman, Munster claims this adjustment (and the EPS change from $7.73 to $5.46) is due to iPhone refresh happening later in 2009 than he anticipated:

“We think they’re going to a June refresh cycle on the iPhone, like they do with the September refresh for iPod.”

For as long as Munster has been covering AAPL, I would have thought the June refresh cycle would be fairly obvious by this point, and I’m surprised he thought they would be refreshing the device any time sooner than June.

Whatever the case may be, he could not realistically keep his target at $235 and needed to provide some explanation for making the change. I can’t think of a single AAPL shareholder who wouldn’t be happy with $180 right now.

The engineers at Google continue adding features to their Gmail and Gmail chat software; most recently adding the ability to play a video clip from YouTube within the chat window itself.

I love the fact the developers behind Gmail and Gmail chat continue to add new features, many rather innovative and useful. This one I’m not clear on however; is this really a necessary improvement, or an improvement at all? As a user, I’m not sure I want to see video thumbnails in a chat window.

The skeptic in me says this might be Google’s way of testing out inline video advertisements across some of their products. Also, how long before this feature is introduced into Gmail itself? This might be one idea that should stay in the labs.

The results are in, and as expected, Apple beats the Street consensus with earnings coming in at $1.78 per diluted share. These numbers include 9% year-over-year growth of the Mac, and 88% growth for the iPhone versus the year ago quarter. For calendar year 2008, Apple sold 13.7 million iPhones.

Thus far the street is very excited about these results; with AAPL currently up 9.5% in after hours trading.

With rumors of Microsoft missing its own numbers, and preparing for a fairly massive round of layoffs, it remains abundantly clear which of these two companies is trending upward with significant momentum, and which is struggling to maintain. Not a bad time to remember: the trend is your friend.

Apple has announced over 500 million iPhone/iPod touch applications (in total) have been downloaded since the launch of the App store. AppleInsider points out this is double the rate of download during the month of December.

While it would be crude to develop any in-depth analysis based upon this single derived figure, clearly there remains an enormous amount of momentum behind native Cocoa Touch apps and their development. So much so, it becomes easy to see why individual developers and software companies alike are flocking to the Cocoa Touch platform.

Macblogz reports on the future of iPhone tethering (using the iPhone as an access point to AT&T’s data network), pointing to the possibility of a $10 per month plan:

When MacBlogz first got word of some initial tethering details, the price of the entire plan seemed a little high, although not surprising. Specifically, the $30 price-point and 5GB data cap did not go over well with most people. These two points were what most people, as well as us have been concerned about the most.

Aviv is correct in pointing out the cost barrier at $30 monthly could in large part dissipate were the price to come in at $10 per month. If you are frequently mobile with your computer, the $10 monthly charge is a small price to pay for the convenience of never having to hunt for an available WiFi network.

Additionally, an attractively priced and configured tethering option might also serve as a driver for new sales; from brand new iPhone buyers as well as existing Generation 1 (Edge) owners.

While the buzz is starting to build around Macworld ’09, and the talk of potential new product introductions increases, I’m hoping for some expanded utility for the existing iPhone. I won’t bore you with talk of copy/paste, to-do lists, or note syncing; all those items have been talked about ad-nauseum and they all need to be addressed.

Here’s an issue with the calendar app which has been bugging me to no end of late. When creating a new event in the calendar, you can (of course!) select the calendar in which to add the new event. However, when editing an existing event, the option of changing calendars is simply not available.

Below are two screen shots, the first shows the Add Event screen where you can clearly see the Calendar as an option. The second image shows the Edit screen, and no way to change the calendar to which the event belongs:

So in order to change an event’s calendar, the user is left to delete the event, and re-add it as new to the alternate calendar (a process, by the way, which could be significantly easier if the user were able to copy and paste the event details).

From a technical standpoint, it seems this must be simply an oversight in the calendar application functionality. At the same time, it’s hard to believe something so basic could be overlooked. (Note: I am not positive if this has always been the way the iPhone calendar has functioned, or if this behavior was introduced along with MobileMe syncing and the 2.0 software). Perhaps it’s a well-known issue that simply has not garnered the significance to be moved up on the development to-do list.

In the spirt of Snow Leopard, here’s hoping Apple feels compelled to better the existing iPhone experience with some increased functionality across its core applications. This wouldn’t grab many news headlines, but would certainly be welcomed by a growing iPhone user base.

9to5Mac is reporting one of the announcements we’ll here at Macworld will be web-based versions of the iWork suite of apps. There is some ambiguity in their report, as to whether or not these apps will be full desktop replacements, or complimentary components to actual desktop software.

As someone who continues to endure the web-based apps that currently exist as part of MobileMe, I highly doubt Apple plans on replacing their desktop iWork apps with a web-only interface. They still have not ironed out all the problems with the web-based email client for MobileMe; are we to believe they are ready to introduce a full productivity suite which exists only in the cloud?

Providing added value by introducing an additional feature for iWork and/or MobileMe users is much more plausible; and online access + storage could be very interesting. Also, it is only logical to assume any new web-based applications from Apple will be designed with the iPhone, iPod touch, or any similar (future) device in mind.

Microsoft has apparently applied for a patent on metered, pay as you go computing.

I realize companies apply for patents all the time which may not actually be indicative of future business decisions, but this one is so out there I wonder why Microsoft is even bothering. Perhaps to make money off the patent as opposed to the business model?

From my vantage point, the last thing consumers want today is another monthly payment as part of a long-term contract. This would be like returning to the days of renting the telephone from the phone company.