Good comments, but I had to remark about the one above. To be completely fair, you have to remember that in Q3 2008, they not only launched the iPhone 3G, but also refilled the channel inventory, by 2M iPhones. That gave shipments a one-time bump. They did not have to refill channel inventory in 2009, so the comparison is not really apples to apples. So, if you look at units sold, there’s not this big drop afterward, and the growth between 2007 and 2009 looks better.

Yes, I had heard the same, but only the once, and no one seems to know when or if that will actually be delivered. In the meantime, who is going to pay $1000.00 per year for a development environment, when Apple provides a free one?

And that’s why the Mono crowd think that their third class development platform will take off on the IPhone. They are hoping to take over corporate development that occurred on Windows Mobile, as Windows Mobile dies.

Novell’s charges for the Mono IPhone platform are ridiculous. Only a corporation would pay those charges, for a development platform which could be used internally. No “profit” driven developer would ever spend that much money.

I gotta think that seeing Microsoft as a standard that is available from competing suppliers has to look a lot less attractive to smart IT managers after the Vista fiasco and now the ridiculous XP to Windows 7 upgrade path. I can’t imagine anybody with thousands of computers see’s any way to go other than waiting until computers get replaced to move to Windows 7. This situation should be an enormous wake up call for businesses relying on Microsoft.

I think there is an underlying dilemma that is worth mentioning:
- On one side a 100% hardware monopoly has never happened and isn’t likely to happen. At some point the world decides this manufacturer is becoming too powerful and starts inducing counter forces.
- On the other side, when third party content like Apps is involved, both consumers and these third parties want to be able to use this content throughout different hardware. In the 1980’s the big frustration was that Apple II software didn’t work on IBM-PC. In the 2010’s – similarly – the big frustration is that iPhone Apps cannot be used on Blackberry.

In music and video this dilemma has been solved by setting industry standards, just remember the VHS – Betamax struggle over the video casette standard. But computer software is so complicated things appeared to be a little bit tougher. Instead of heading towards an industry standard for desktop PC’s in the 1990’s the surprise outcome has been the rise of a proprietary third party that acted as an intermediate between hardware and software: Microsoft. So the pundit prediction of a similar outcome in smartphones is at least understandable. But let’s face it, the “Microsoft” solution hasn’t proved sustainable either.

At the introduction of the iPhone Steve Jobs proposed the use of webapps as industry standard for third party developers and, even though he was boohed away by his audience, this would have been (maybe still is) an elegant solution for the dilemma. It was clearly orchestrated with Google and part of a broader movement promoting standards like HTML5. From this perspective iPhone can be seen as the first specimen of an “Android” phone;-) We will never know in how far Apple by that time already had secret plans for a proprietary App-Store but the huge success of the App-Store must have come as a surprise to anybody including Apple itself.

Due to the App-Store success the dilemma remains unsolved, which is not only a benefit but also a risk for Apple. A risk because the App-Store causes pain for consumers owning a different branded phone who cannot reach the App-Store content and for developers who cannot reach all of their audience. To protect the iPhone platform Apple faces the huge task to make a very precise distinction as to what aspects of its platform should remain proprietary and what aspects should be disclosed for industry standards. My expectation is that, for this purpose, the Android ideology will remain very much alive even when the actual sales figures are less impressive.

Are the cell phone market share numbers based on units sold or new subscriptions with carriers? I believe RIMM is propping up declining numbers with BOGO sales (Buy One, Get One), a promotion the company has been running with Verizon for several consecutive quarters now (the start of which coincided with Apple’s explosion of iPhone sales in 2008).

I’ve also read that many Verizon subscribers get these free, second BlackBerry phones, resell them on E-Bay and then cancel their new service. Reportedly, this is the reason why Verizon plans to dramatically increase its cancellation penalty fee this month.