Apple Market Share on the Rise

Coolness factor, design, an intelligent business decision to switch to Intel processors (2006) and an excellent positioning strategy pushed Apple back into the game in the computer market.

Apple’s retail market share is 14 percent, and 66% for PCs costing $1,000 or more. And all this is still growing. For the first quarter, Windows notebooks had “zero percent” growth year over year. By comparison, Apple notebooks had 50 to 60 percent growth.

Apple’s success above $1,000 defies some of the conventional retail thinking about PCs, where the emphasis is on lower pricing and greater features. “Consumers don’t care about features,” Stephen Baker, NPD’s vice president of industry analysis asserted. “People see a value proposition in an offering that gives them a great experience.”

Stephen said Apple appeals to the right segments, like multiple-computer households. Consumers that are buying a second, third or even fourth PC have different buying priorities, such as ease of use.

But the retail stores make a huge difference. “Apple has got better distribution than it’s had in the last 15 years,” Stephen explained. “They’re in the right spot right now. There’s the iPod advantage. But the big thing is the stores.”

Blackberry Bold vs. Apple iPhone

RIM has been the dominant player in the corporate-oriented smartphone space for some time and was definitely focused more on business capabilities and less on entertainment and fun.

The announced BlackBerry Bold uses iPhone design elements to create a sexy device that appears focused on the traditional BlackBerry strength of e-mail.

With a tri-band HSDPA radio and including integrated GPS and Wi-Fi, this phone’s purpose is to aggressively defend against the iPhone.

One advantage RIM has that shouldn’t be forgotten is that and RIM sells its devices through a variety of carriers. Apple, to get the deals it needed, typically has one carrier exclusively (though this seems to be changing here and there).

The only problem is, and it’s a big one, is that it won’t actually be available for sale until late summer or possibly over two months after the iPhone arrives.

iPhone has its roots in the iPod. This makes the iPhone more of an entertainment device.The iPhone 2.0 gains several critical enhancements for business. It should integrate much better than the 1.0 product with enterprise e-mail systems, but it won’t work with a BlackBerry server. It is much more secure, but it can’t yet be centrally managed using tools already in place to manage BlackBerries.

It has full 3G radios and it may support GPS, video conferencing, and VoIP (Voice over IP) capability.

Because iPhones are now sold out in most geographies, speculation is increasing that the new iPhone may launch before the expected June 9th date. Rumors suggest a second device is coming that is 1.5 times larger than the iPhone and vastly more capable. But given that Apple regularly leaks false rumors to cover up what it is actually releasing, such rumors have to be discounted. It is still expected to eventually bring out a smaller iPhone to complete the line.

As of now, before the iPhone 2.0 comes out to the market we can only compare the actual products:

   blackberry-bold  apple-iphone
  Blackberry Bold Apple iPhone
Dimensions 114 x 66 x 14 mm 115 x 61 x 11.6 mm
Weight 133 g 135 g
Input interface Full QWERTY keyboard & Trackball navigation Multi-touch input method & Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate
Memory microSDHC, up to 8 GB + 128 MB flash memory
1 GB storage memory
624 MHz processor
4/8/16 GB shared memory
Data GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA (3.6 Mbps), Wi-Fi GPRS, EDGE, Wi-Fi
Messaging SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging, Push Email SMS, Email
Photo 2 MP, 1600×1200 2 MP, 1600×1200
Others – Built-in GPS
– BlackBerry maps
– Document viewer/editor
– Java
– DivX/WMV/XviD/3gp player
– Organizer
– Calculator
– Voice dial
– Built-in handsfree
– Voice memo
– Google Maps
– Widgets support
– iPod audio/video player
– PIM, calendar, to-do list
– TV output
– Photo browser/editor
– Voice memo
– Integrated handsfree

Mr.Tuca is Pathetic

Without trying to save any opinion on tuca’s IQ I still believe that his “article” on bloggers is just a pathetic and desperate try to grab the online attention on him and his “master-skills” as a journalist and grab a little of the search engines traffic on it (no, no… that’s way too smart for that dumb ass). Obviously, I won’t provide any link. 🙂

Via Alex

Google Translate Speaks Romanian too

Google Translate‘s coverage has been expanded dramatically. It now supports the translation between any of the following languages: English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish (the new languages are shown in bold). From 26 language pairs, Google Translate now supports 506 language pairs and becomes the most comprehensive online translation tool available for free.

The most useful feature of the new Google Translate is the automatic language detection feature. You no longer have to select the language of a web page in order to translate it to English. Just choose “Detect language” and Google will attempt to figure out the source language for you and translate the page or text to the language of your choice.

The automatic translation is far from perfect, but is definetly an ecvellent start which, knowing Google will improve fast over time.

Nokia Communication Center BETA

Nokia Communication Center

Nokia just released today the Nokia Communication Center BETA. The application comes as a useful tool for all people that got sick of the Nokia PC Suite contacts and messages management.

I have to admit it’s an improvement over the PC Suite capabilities both in term of managing (and especially exporting and importing) contacts and both SMS and MMS sending (especially to multiple recipients)

Here is the provided list of key features:

  • Create and send messages easily
  • Receive, view, forward, and reply to messages as they arrive
  • Compose multimedia messages effortlessly with easy access to the images on both PC and device
  • Manage messages, and sort and group them to quickly find what you are looking for
  • Display all your messages in a timeline
  • Manage all the contacts stored on your device
  • Add new contacts with ease
  • Create contact cards complete with thumbnail images

Back in Business

Ok! After one year and something I kinda decided to get back on track with (so and so) regular blogging, at least at the rythm I had before this long break.

I’m (still) getting to do it in English, at least for a while. Moved on, pretty painfull, from Drupal to an easier to manage WordPress platform and as I still am in transition don’t shoot just yet.