Long Time Coming

Hi All,

It has been a couple of months since my last post. Sorry for the delay. A lot has changed since then. The mobile community has grown and some interesting developments are occurring in the world of tech.

On the personal side I am now co-coaching my son’s soccer team and spent last Sunday through a grueling 8 hour, physically intensive soccer coaching clinic.

So let’s jump right into it. Since the release of the iPhone 3G, we have replaced 5 BlackBerrys but now have a total of 9 iPhones in use at our corporate office. After I had a look at the first iPhone here, it clearly became evident that the return on the investment was substantially increased over our use of the BlackBerrys. Now don’t get me wrong: I have a lot of love for RIM and BlackBerrys but it is clear that a bar has been raised and set for mobile devices. The iPhone really is a computer in the palm of your hand. It’s useable. It’s useful. It’s easy to navigate.

I even have my systems engineer empowered to VPN into our back end systems and remote control any of our servers from the iPhone. That means he can stay on top of things anytime and almost anywhere.

The greatest part of the iPhone? Other manufacturers are forced to rethink and redesign their product offerings. We as consumers benefit both on price and quality of the devices. While there are a zillion iPhone knock-offs out there, the real competition will come when the BlackBerry Storm
(formerly known as the Thunder) is released in Q4. It will feature a touch screen interface and RIM is developing an application store much like Apple’s iTunes App Store. The App Store has had 100 million downloads in 2 months and is outpacing iTunes music’s debut four-fold.

The other contender will be Google Android-based phones. This will be interesting to see. While Apple and RIM control their hardware and software, Google’s mobile OS is being built to run on multiple manufacturer-built devices. Personally, I see the maintenance in keeping compatibility smooth as an anchor on the development of the OS. Remember, Apple just has to make their OS compatible with the iPhone and the iPod Touch. And those two devices are very similar in technical specifications.

In any case, the mobile landscape is changing in a fast and dramatic fashion!