kemper

Great parallel drawn between the iPhone and appliances — it really is the microwave of the smartphone world.

What people always miss when making the "open" argument with regard to the iPhone is this: What functionality is "missing"?

There are a billion things that the iPhone can't do, and much of this "missing" functionality would be achievable if iOS was open source (and is achievable if you jailbreak). But Apple builds products for the mass market, and all of this amazing functionality the iPhone is "missing" is functionality the mass market can live with or without.

As new apps bring cool new functionality, great. As new features come along in future versions of iOS, even better. If some cool stuff is left out though, so be it. 90% of iPhone owners probably won't know or care.

Personally, I do know and I do care, so I use an Android phone.

You're totally right. Developers should have no interest in the television that will bring apps to the forefront of the living room, succeeding where Google and others have failed. Why would hackers want to develop for another massively successful category of iOS products?

My mistake.

Whether or not you or I agree, you've completely missed the point the author makes.

"For tech savvy smartphone users, committing to a two-year contract is brutal. Mobile technology moves so fast that smartphones can seem outdated just months after they launch. While this trend is bound to continue, the degree to which new generations of Android phones outdo their predecessors will always ebb and flow. Handsets have been improving at a somewhat modest pace for the past year or so, but the next crop of smartphones to hit store shelves will represent a huge leap forward rather than a few short steps."

His position is that while next-gen will always surpass current-gen, the upcoming handsets he covers will be a more substantial leap than generations past, and subsequent devices over the next 6-9 months will be playing catch-up rather than continuing to leapfrog.

Why would Apple care about profits or margins its rivals are achieving? What matters is what Reuters is suggesting: For whatever reason (they suggest pricing/economy) people are buying not-iPhones instead of iPhones in what appears to be an increasing number of cases. Market share is an indication of that. Apple may not care about market share as a metric per say, but the company absolutely cares about people buying not-iPhones instead of iPhones. This, of course, is why they're suing every single one of their biggest competitors to begin with.

I think your response is a bit short-sighted. Look at market share as an indicator, not a means to an end. Apple might not care that its market share is 10% or 70%, but it does care that it just launched a new smartphone and sales are slowing while its rivals are picking up steam.

If you want to believe that it's a coincidence that Apple is hitting its competitors the hardest in two countries where it seems to be losing the most ground, that's fine. Others might not share your opinion though. Germany and France are key markets — remember, the 4S launched in each of those countries at the same time as in the US.

Don't focus on market share, focus on what it might tell us.

I don't agree at all.

"The more interesting stat, perhaps, is that more than a quarter of respondents in ChangeWave’s survey who confirmed an imminent Kindle Fire purchase said they would buy the Amazon tablet in place of an iPad."

The correlation between the intentions of respondents in this survey and the general tablet-buying public is not clear, as is the case with any survey, but in this context the Kindle Fire is clearly a threat to the iPad. 26% - that's a huge threat.