Washington Post featured my CEO in our demo vehicle at CES in Las Vegas. Very cool how we are on the cutting edge of bringing DVB-SH to the US market. Here is the Washington Post blog article.
Some websites with themes, wallpaper, and ringtones. All free of coarse! 
www.mobile41.com
blackberrythemecentral.com
www.tuneusin.com
www.deviantdigital.ws
Mobile Software
www.shozu.com
Beyond411 (aka Berry 411)
Yahoo! Go
Google Maps
I got the first one available in the store. Love it so far and it is a much needed upgrade from the old 8700 and 7100 series I have been using. It includes a nice 2MP camera and it has a flash. The media player portion is sweet! I can pretty much use it to listen to music, once I get my MicroSD card from Newegg.com. It even has a new headset connector, which is 3.5mm. This is the same as your standard headphone connector for a walkman or PC. That means I can use quality headphones! The speakerphone is extremely loud, and the rings are very crisp and clear.
I am still getting used to the rollerball, but I am starting to like it. I am not fond of the themes, as I was using a Vodafone theme on a 8700 recently and loved that. Hopefully a few months will bring some nicer themes from the community. I am happy with my purchase, and hope Cingular’s service is reliable enough. I moved from T-Mobile, after being there for the last 6 years, because my co-workers and family are on Cingular and that enables free mobile-to-mobile. I waited to switch for the last 2 months because of this device. I would have waited for T-Mobile’s if I hadn’t had that factor.
All deference to the folks that believe in the omniscience of Steve Jobs, but there is almost no way that Apple is going to be able to sell 10 million iPhones in 18 months. Just to show that I’m not a naysayer, I do agree that 1 million iPhones in 2007 is completely reasonable.
Here’s the rationale:
With AT&T/Cingular being the only announced carrier to date, getting to the 10 million number would require 1 out of every 6 CURRENT AT&T/Cingular customers to buy an iPhone. The people that will buy iPhones are the small subset that are currently paying well over $100 per month for wireless service. With AT&T/Cingular’s current ARPU at less that $50, a standard distribution would suggest that substantially less than 1 in 6 are currently paying more than $100/month. Compound that with the fact that many of these people (myself included) have already upgraded to Cingular’s 3G network, and we won’t want to lose all of that network speed just to have a slightly slicker form factor. (Side note: I was going to wait for the iPhone, but ultimately decided that the Blackjack was plenty feature rich and also had 3G, allowing me to watch my slingbox from anywhere - something you just can’t do on the EDGE network that the iPhone will have).
Wait, you say, the iPhone will attract people to leave Verizon and Sprint. I definitely agree with that point, which is why I believe that the iPhone was a huge coup for Cingular. It will attract many of the high ARPU, fashon-savvy customers away from the competitors. But if you’ve noticed, Cingular remains the only carrier in the world that has done a deal with Apple. The reason for that is the eggregious terms that Apple forced on Cingular. Apparently Verizon was going to get the iPhone, but couldn’t stomach the terms. The terms are so difficult that AT&T’s board of directors had to sign off on the deal - something that has never happened before for a single handset deal. Because Apple got AT&T to fold like a lawn chair, they are expecting other carriers to do the same, but the European carriers are not biting.
There have been well over 1 million people that have signed up in Apple stores and online to get an email when the iPhone is generally available. Let’s be generous and say that all those people buy the phone in the first 6 months it is out. That gets you all of the early adopters. Then what? Who buys it next? With a $500 price tag, very few people will be able to unless some kind of payment plan is offered (which there won’t be for all of the reliability issues highlighted by others).
In all reality, the main reason this is a coup for Cingular is the fact that 1) they will be able to attract the very high end customers from the other carriers, 2) they will be able to retain their own high end customers, and 3) they will drive consumers into their Cingular stores just to look at and play with the iPhone. The reason #3 is so critical is that Cingular has a teriffic selection of phones that have pieces of the iPhone functionality (MP3 player, video, etc) at a fraction of the price. Cingular’s bet is that for every 100 people that come in to look at the iPhone, 1 will buy it, 9 will buy something else, and the other 90 will just leave the store. Hey, that’s 100 people that wouldn’t have walked in the store that day, thus 10 sales that wouldn’t have been made. Smart move if you ask me.
A the end of the day the iPhone will do very well and Jobs will again be touted as a consumer products/marketing demi-god. However, given the current information we have, it will take time for it to get to the 10 million plateau. Unless, of course, Jobs has a couple other carriers up his sleve, in which case my entire analysis is out the window, which (as a shareholder) would be fine by me.
I got an email from the guys at The DiscHub declaring a 50% off sale on their product. I bought 2 of them (both Storm Trooper white) when they first launched over a year ago, and I love it. One sits on my desk to hold CDs that I randomly need to rebuild/setup computers, and the other sits next to my DVD player and holds my Netflix and Xbox360 games. I don’t have the cases out anymore, and there is no need to worry about scratching the discs. The DiscHub has been licensed to a major manufacturing company and soon it will be available in some of the major stores. Anyway, if you want to pickup one (before they go all brand name) for $5 and free shipping, head over to TheDiscHub.com and use the coupon HALFOFF.
Okay where are the Windows Mobile 5 phones for Verizon and Sprint? My CEO loves Verizon’s coverage in NYC, but hates the battery life of the new Blackberry 8703e. The standard battery only lasts 3hours of talk time, and there isn’t an extended battery available currently. He had a Motorola E815 with extended battery and liked it, but it eventually got worn out and he wanted to go for a combined device. Sprint and Verizon both offer Windows Mobile 5 PDAs with full QWERTY keyboards, but no simple phone WM5 devices like Cingular and T-Mobile. Does that mean people don’t want the Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone Edition? I don’t think so, since I know several people who own the T-Mobile SDA, Cingular 2125, Audiovox SMT5600, and Motoral MPx200 and 220.
Hooper just left his job with me, and needed a new PDA-type device since he wasn’t going to use his Blackberry. You might remember that he had been using the Nokia 6682 from his article on CityID. It was not really “Outlook compatible” in both of our minds as the sync software was clunky at best, and required a USB cable. He needed a professional device that he could use as a mobile worker, but without the bulk of a blackberry.
Castle and I have the Audiovox SMT5600, but it runs Windows Mobile 2003 SE. While great, it is not top of the line with only offers GPRS data speeds along with a lot of software bugs. Schlosser upgraded from his Motorola MPx200 and picked up the new Cingular branded 2125. Would that be the device for Hooper? (more…)
Sling Media Launches WM5 Smartphone SlingPlayer App Gallery (MobileBurn)
While the quality of this video is amature in nature, I think this shows the power of the mobile networks that are being deployed. Also, I think it is a good representation of how all of our entertainment lives are going to eventually converge into an on-demand model. Slingbox is showing the world how powerful having on-demand access to your entire entertainment library is for a consumer. Now, with devices like the Motorola Q, the Slingbox mobile application and Verizon’s CDMA 1xEV-DO network, you can get your content anywhere. Check out the demo below!
Everyone was wondering what the Origami device was, why it is special, and if Microsoft was going into the hardware business. Personally I think it is clear that features and devices they showed in March at CeBIT didn’t live up to the hype. These Ultra Mobile Portable Computing (UPMC) devices are supposed to fall between Tablet and PDA.
Samsung has the Q1, which is basically a small 7-inch tablet pc with an 900MHz Intel Celeron and 512MB of RAM, and a 30GB hard drive. The only differences between tablet pcs and this thing are extra controls/buttons, instant-on multimedia player (no XP load to play). Why in the world do I need this thing? It costs close to the same as some tablet PCs at around $1100. It isn’t going to have a longer battery life, which will be 3 hours to start.
I personally predict this thing will flop. People have not been flocking to tablet PCs like they have to PDAs and ultra small media players. I think this market won’t pan out until the battery life is there and the device is thinner and lighter. The idea is great, but I think there is a disconnect between the current offerings and what would be successful in capturing the consumer market. I could be wrong since pre-orders at Best Buy sold out within 24 hours. Sure that grabs some media attention, but I don’t think the marketing for UMPC was done properly. Next I’ll post on why and how I think Microsoft should change marketing techniques.
Last weekend I got a new toy in the mail. It was the Garmin Forerunner 305, which I had been waiting for for a few weeks due to Garmin’s shipping issues getting these units out to the retailers. Well, it finally arrived, and I love it. Basically the unit is a GPS receiver and heart rate monitor training tool for the exercise enthusiast. I have trained with a heart rate monitor in the past but never with a GPS receiver due to their normally large size. However, this unit contains some great improvements that make the GPS functionality really useful. The watch does more than I can talk about here, but you can monitor pace/speed, heart rate, time, distance covered, and many other metrics during your workout. After the workout you can download all this information to your computer and visually examine your workout. For example, check out this display of a bike ride I did recently. Or if you have Google Earth installed on your computer you can view this arial tour of the ride.
Right now I am still just collecting and looking at the data from my rides and runs. As I learn more about my fiteness level and how my body reacts to various exercise, I will be programming specific workouts into the watch. Then instead of defining a workout as 1 mile easy, 2 miles up-tempo, 1 mile easy and guessing where each of those mile markers are, I will be able to know exactly when I’ve covered each mile at what pace and at what heart rate.
If you want one for yourself, check out the deal at Campersland. They have it for $60 less than most places are selling it for, and they upgraded my shipping to 2nd Day Air for free due to the fact that my order was backordered for so long.
Twenty four hours in a day. Work eight hours, sleep eight hours, but what do you do with your ExtraEight?
