In the Phone different forums, surur (with the help of marcol) has posted up some fine analysis on the question of all those missing iPhones we mentioned a couple weeks back. The question: whether or not iPhone sales had slumped over the holidays (they didn’t), but more importantly, how big is the gap between what Apple says they’ve sold and what AT&T says they’ve sold. As you can see in the graph above, it’s a big gap that’s getting bigger.
I’d previously doubted that a significant part of that gap was unlocked iPhones and unsold inventory. It seemed like the 1.5 million gap had to be some error in reporting or other such strangeness. But based on what analysis is available, it’s starting to look like “unlocked and unsold iPhones” are exactly what makes up that gap.
The real question, then, is what the ratio is of unlocked to unsold. Actually, the real question is what does this gap tell us about how Apple is going to be able to talk about the iPhone. Read on for the answers to both questions, after the break!
I hate to say I told you so… ok, that’s a lie. I love to say I told you so. Google has an iPhone fixation, as Macworld made clear. The latest piece of evidence for their love affair is this NYTimes blog entry, where Google co-president Sergey Brin waxes ecstatic about the Google Maps feature on the iPhone.
Also interesting that that Google CEO Eric Schmidt also chimes in on the potentially awkward fact that Google is developing their own (competing) smartphone operating system. Schmidt’s take – they’ll profit on the iPhone even after Android comes out by way of online ads. They should, too, since the iPhone hits the web more than any other smartphone out there today.
One of the most interesting stories at Macworld hasn’t gotten a lot of attention in the larger press – namely that Google was around at Macworld a lot more than most people realize. It’s not just that they have a medium-sized booth featuring both their Mac products and new iPhone-compatible web offerings. No, the real story about Google at Macworld is that it’s very clear that Google has the iPhone on their collective mind in a big, big way.
Google’s services will continue to be great on the iPhone even after their Android OS hits the market. Read on to find out why!
Google gone and got itself all dolled up for Macworld. I’m a big fan of the new tabs and an even bigger fan of the new http://igoogle.com, which is pretty much the only web portal I’ve ever bothered with (besides, of course, just the plain jane Google page). They take full advantage of Safari’s capabilities with neat AJAXification throughout. If you’re a Google user (and you know you are) and if you’re an iPhone user (and you’re here so that’s likely true too), it’s worth a look-see. There’s other improvements, including:
As long as we’re talking Google, check out this Christmas miracle:
The New York Times reports that, based on internal data from Google, more iPhones were connecting during Christmas than any other mobile device, despite the fact that industry figures show only two percent of smartphones worldwide as belonging to Apple. A few days after Christmas, iPhone traffic dropped below that of phones using the Nokia-backed Symbian operating system, but kept a second-place ranking. – Electronista | Google gains iPhone traffic, updates apps
…Looks like more than a few lucky folks received an iPhone for Christmas, no? That’s one benefit of Apple’s non-standard activation agreement – it’s a heck of a lot easier to gift an iPhone than it is any other phone in the US.
There have been a lot of snarky comments about Apple in the press lately, usually from big media companies or other smartphone competitors. There are so many CEOs fiddling while Apple burns down their little walled cities, there’s enough of them for an orchestra. Or at least a hoedown.
Google has announced Android, an open source Linux operating system designed to be very customizable by programmers. This isn’t the GPhone, the long-rumored Google Phone. Google is not making any of the actual phones, just the software. Android joins the ranks of myriad Linux development attempts: the new pro-sumer Palm OS, Access Linux Platform, Trolltech’s QTopia, OpenMoko, and others in Asia that are unknown to me.
I don’t know if this one will be more successful than the others, and they haven’t announced what it looks like, or what it will do. They just announced the software license and that it exists, or that it should in late 2008… but expect a bunch of publicity all over the place anyway. What I do know is that this effort will have a lot of money behind it.
Google has been enabling IMAP access for everyone that has been using GMail. IMAP, like POP, is a method of downloading mail from a mail service. POP works really well if you just use one computer, but it’s a nightmare if you use more than one. And you know, the iPhone is a lot like a computer, enough that using POP on it has kind of been a nightmare in terms of checking my work email. The option for IMAP hasn’t showed up on my account yet, but it’s showed up for Dieter, and he has a good account of how it works up at WMExperts. If you prefer, there’s also an official Google video available at YouTube, catered specifically for iPhone users. If you want article help on how to install everything on your desktop email, GMail has posted a help file on their site.
And now, that video for any iPhone users out there:
Google has unveiled Google Calendar for the iPhone. Should one visit that link on their iPhone, you should see something like the image below. It looks to be very nice, especially if you want to be able to tell the difference between separate calendars, like say “work” and “home.”
Remember back in January at MacWorld, during the iPhone unveiling, when Google CEO Eric Schmidt jested on stage that one of the reasons he joined Apple’s board of directors was to get an iPhone? It was all made in fun of course, but it seems Eric made good on that boast because he in fact does now have an iPhone, which he flaunted on camera at a recent forum. (see above).
