Just yesterday Rene started a interesting thread, Are You Running Your iPhone 3G on EDGE and Why? While I understand why some of you may choose to EDGE over 3G, for me, I like to live dangerously, 3G or go home. How about you? Stop by and let Rene know what you think.
Next up we have a thread that yours truly started, it’s simply about the latest iPhone rumors. Is there an EDGE only iPhone in the works? How about a CDMA version for China? And before all of you Verizon hopefuls start to get exited - no, a CDMA version from China would not work on the Verizon network. They use different frequencies. Thoughts?
Poor RIM, I can’t remember such a hyped phone that pretty much just flopped from the very beginning. Enter the BlackBerry Storm. It seems like the in thing to do these days is ditch your Storm for an iPhone 3G. Not a bad move in our opinion and we welcome forum member whsingleton to the good side!
Our last thread for today comes to us from Ivoryplum. Ivoryplum wants to know what is the average sync time with iTunes? I honestly can’t complain with my syncing. How about you?
So there you have it folks, some really good threads for all of you to check out. Just remember to register first!
Fortune has covered Forrester Research’s latest report “Making iPhone Work In The Enterprise: Early Lessons Learned”. Whiplash-much? After all, it does come on the heels of previous reports including “The iPhone Is Not Meant For Enterprises”, “The Top 10 Reasons Why We Recommend That IT Not Support It”, and “Harold and Kumar Don’t Want an iPhone at White Castle”. Okay, we made that last one up. Barely.
This time the people who were crafting link-bait before there were any links to bait have seemingly decided the best bang for their buck is to pull a 180 and, instead of trouncing the iPhone in enterprise, actually support it. Sure, Apple’s increasing development of the OS, including iPhone 2.x and the upcoming iPhone 3.0 could have something to do with it, but even in IT it’s generally more about the artist than the tools. So to speak.
What does Forrester claim makes the iPhone so suddenly worthy?
Employees like them. “In this era of Technology Populism, where consumer IT is often better than enterprise IT, it sometimes just makes sense to give employees the freedom to choose the tools they want.”
They make mobile collaboration easier. “As anybody with experience on both iPhones and BlackBerry will tell you, the Internet feels natural on an iPhone and a like a chore on a BlackBerry.”
iPhone users need less hand-holding. “All three firms have set up wikis so that employees can support each other. ‘Our early adopters sometimes teach things we’d rather our iPhone users not know, but overall they provide better support than we can,’ said one person we interviewed.”
They can be cheaper in the long run. “In at least one case, an iPhone adopter found that the data plans for previous mobile devices were more expensive than the consumer plans AT&T is offering for iPhones. This company was able to reset its baseline plan pricing 30% lower for all phones because it supported iPhone.”
For an actual iPhone endorsement, some remaining corporate gotchas, and 3.0 redemptioms, check out Fortune’s coverage or throw $749 at Forrester (if you didn’t just blow that cash on an unlocked iPhone…)
Do you have post-CTIA-syndrome? Feel like all the hot new smartphone news happened two weeks ago and not much has happened since? Wondering if you have the strength to make it through another day without a pithy overview of everything that happened in the smartphone world last week? Easter feast have you feeling too lazy to do anything but peruse enough smartphone news to fill out a short novella?
Fret not, our best of SPE news roundup has you covered. Get clicking!
It is Nokia E75 week at Nokia Experts as the device started shipping in selected countries. Matt has one in his hands and gives you a walk through the setup of the new Nokia Messaging 2.0 software integrated in the E75. The Nokia N97 is the flagship product coming soon from Nokia and we had a chance to get some hands-on time with it at CTIA.
Meanwhile: Apple is approaching one BILLION downloads on the App Store, and to celebrate they’re giving away a $10,000 iTunes gift card. They might need those numbers to, what with the $1.29 price hike, followed up by Amazon MP3 and Walmart, driving purchases down. What else could go wrong? Verizon and AT&T cracking down on our data, of course!
Checking in over at TreoCentral, we learn that the Treo Pro is now available in Canada at TELUS for as low as $149.99 (with qualifying 3-year service plan). Plus we find out that Americans really love to text, seeing as they’ve sent over 1 trillion text messages in 2008. And in other news, we learn via our sister site WMExperts that AT&T’s 3G MicroCell enters the trial phase, testing in selected, signal deprived homes next week. And finally, we have the latest Smartphone Experts Roundtable in which Dieter, Kevin, Rene, and Phil discuss CTIA, along with other big news coming out of the smartphone world in the past few weeks.
Macworld has a great article up today about the arrival of Skype on the iPhone (and soon the BlackBerry) and what the widespread availability of VoIP (voice over IP) clients — which eschew the traditional phone lines to send talk via data instead — means for cell providers like AT&T, Verizon, O2, Rogers, etc. who’ve made tons of traditional money billing us all by the minute.
One common future seen for cell companies is that of “dumb pipes” — like DSL or cable companies that provide bandwidth but few if any premium services. Verizon shows how far (and foolish) they’ll go to avoid that fate:
“We have moved away from unlimited data plans,” Verizon Wireless President and CEO Lowell McAdam said at a question-and-answer session at CTIA. “The excitement of an over-the-top application like (Skype) in an unlimited environment means one thing to a customer. In an environment where you’re paying for every byte, that means something totally different.”
I wonder, tongue only partially in cheek, if McAdam used to work for the music or movie industry? Our own editor-in-chief, Dieter Bohn, freshly returned from CTIA shared his thoughts:
Dear Verizon: You always become what you most fear. To wit: dumb pipes. Love, the inevitable.
Sounds good to me. Let’s make a deal, carriers. You supply the bandwidth, keep the bits open and neutral, and I’ll pay for the service same way I pay for my electricity and plug in whatever gadget I want. Deal?
Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO of AT&T Mobility, the iPhone’s US carrier, seems almost on a page with that already:
“The way the world is going, it’ll just be, ‘How much data do you want to buy?’ and you do whatever you want over that data.”
Check out the complete article at Macworld for more, and let us know what future you want for your data below…
