Thanks for writing and thanks for reading. There are multiple ways of skinning this cat, so to speak. One is an enterprise-oriented approach, which has been RIM’s entry into the market. Another is a more consumer/entertainment approach to the market, which has been Apple’s perspective on the market. If you missed it, Michael Mace wrote a great article about mobile computing segmentation a while ago. It’s long but well worth a read:
http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2007/01/shape-of-smartphone-and-mobile-data.html

The question is: are there other customer segments not taken care of by these two? I’m not certain there is. Where do pro-sumers fit in? How about information users? Who am I missing?

Elia

Speaking of demises, I’ve been using Palm OS for some 4 years by now; OK, I arrived late to the PDA scenery, and now using Palms is second to last in innovations. I gotta cry out my misery because I consider Palm OS an agile and efficient platform, and it’s turning sad to visit Palm-oriented websites and notice that many apps date back to 1998, 1997, and the like. Feel like I’m living in the wrong decade. But though, notwithstanding the lack of actual improvement over the years, I still believe that Palm OS is better than the Windows Mobile OS. I gotta say that Palm OS needs improvement, needs updating, not remaking. MS Windows for Mobile does need remaking, from scratch.

I’ve tested several Blackberry models and my opinion is that, just as many others think, its one and best edge is email push. In fact, I believe it’s the only smarthone family that gets email push done right. But the tool is half of the solution, and the RIM server is the other half. A good question is why nobody else is following RIM’s steps into reliable email push. Set apart from the latter, Blackberries have me not astonished. As a Palm advocate, I expect too much from either a PDA or a smartphone, so the Blackberry’s capacity and ease to handle organizer-style data didn’t thrill me. Not me, who BTY am also a FranklinCovey advocate (so, I DO handle data). And one more thing: at least here in Mexico, the cellphone capabilities of all Blackberries… let’s say it politely, don’t thrill nobody. Here, the true ruler of the cellphone market is Nokia… period.

Speaking of the iPhone, I’ve commented with my friends that I don’t believe the prophecy that it’ll fully replace competitors like the Treo family; I don’t believe it, not because I’m a Palm advocate, but because I believe that the iPhone is no replacement to a business smartphone in the first place. The iPhone and the Treo belong to different and separate technological pathways. The Palm was invented, the iPod was invented, and both eventually got a cellphone inside. But the Treo is a PDA, say a digital organizer, with a cellphone inside; it’s a productivity tool from the roots up. The iPhone is an iPod that went wireless; it’s an entertainment tool from the roots up. Now, a Treo can play music, video and the like, and the iPhone can convert measurement units and watch the Stock Exchange, but in each case those are additional capabilities that come “from the other side of the street”. Wanna test my opinion? It’s frequent that corporate employees get a smartphone for the job; smartphones like Blackberries, Treos, MotoQs, Nextels, … Have you listened of a company that’s delivering iPhones in the hands of their corporate force?

Let´s see what’s about to happen next. I’ve enjoyed your blog.