War at the mobile world

Remember the pre iPhone era !  Boy !  that sounds like stone age era !!  With the entrance of iPhone OS the whole concept of smart phone changed.  iPhone was mind blowing, it is a small computer itself.  You could make calls, browse internet, chat, take photos, listen to music, play games and do a lot more you ever wanted to do on a phone. Soon it became a de facto standard. Everybody wanted to do everything on their phone.  Blackberry was the closest thing you could get, but crackberry…i mean blackberry had its own limitation. But blackberry was mainly for business men and they are RIM’s majority of the customers.
Year 2007 saw iPhone ruling the smart phone market,  on August 2008, Google decided to give iPhone a run for its money.  Oct 2008 saw Google’s Android being launched.  Microsoft with its mobile OS was there but was totally sidelined by the sheer force of these two mobile OS.  Both iPhone OS and Android has come a long way since then. Today iOS and Android are extremely good and is pretty much at par. Sure Apple’s App store has lot more software than Android market and all that, but in reality average and above average users don’t use most of the softwares in Apple’s App Store.  Both OS have great potential and unlimited capability.  One of the advantage of Android is its open source, so the capabilities are unlimited, but that its disavantage too, the security on software is not as reliable as iOS.
App Store is totally controlled by Apple, they review the software for security holes and stability before its put out on the App store, but Android is not like that. Most of the software available is not reviewed and is on owner’s risk.  Since Apple controls and the hardware and software, the integration is superior than that of Android.  Android is a great OS, but the cell phone providers rape it , customize and bloat the phones with junk software.
If you are a fan of Google and uses their apps like gmail, google doc, gtalk and so forth, then the little green droid is a better choice.  Even though there are google app available for iPhone, they seem (obviously) to integrate and work better on Android phones.

I happen to get a chance to use both the latest Samsung Captivate , an Android phone and the latest iPhone 4.  I have to say both the phones were amazing.  With iPhone 4, I had issues with call drops and signal issues until I got a case for it.  Once I put on the case and updated to the newest iOS 4.1, all my problems went away (touch wood).   Samsung Captivate on the other hand just worked for me.  It has a bigger screen and the UI is fluid.  The screen orientation on Samsung captivate was a lot better than that of iPhone 4.  But certain third party software I had crashed once in a while, but thats probably because of the software.   I have been using iPhone since 2009 when 3GS came out and when my friends applauded when they found out I had switched to Android. I was the “man”…a true tech nerd …whatever you call it.  But Android just didn’t integrate with my iMac.  All my computers at my home are Apple based , so I rely on iTunes, iPhotos and so on. Android just didn’t talk to my iTune library , iContact , iPhoto and iMovies.  Double Twist just didn’t cut it for me.  It gave the iTunes look, but it just wasn’t the same. I could not backup my phone, couldn’t just copy the Albums and playlist off my iTunes.  Contacts from my iMac would not sync. I didn’t like that.  Besides, my wife’s phone is iPhone 3GS and I wanted to share data between those seamlessly, so I went from the “true tech nerd” to the “apple geek”.  One another issue I have with Samsung Captivate was the navigation. Google Maps look a long time to find my location and when I turned on the GPS, the phone sucked lot of power and got really warm. Away went Samsung Captivate and came iPhone 4.   I have been enjoying the iPhone 4 since then.

But late last week, Microsoft announced that they are bring out the iPhone and Android killer – Windows Phone 7 . They even announced the funeral of iPhone and Android.  How rude ?  Microsoft is big and they are becoming better. Look at the Windows 7 andWindows Server 2008, they are a LOT better than Windows Vista (heck anything is better than Vista) and Windows 2000 server.  They are realizing that they cannot just produce some crap that people will buy, because now people have choices.

Some of the features Windows Phone 7 are pretty good. The company recently announced with confidence :

Windows Phone 7 is the most thoroughly tested mobile platform Microsoft has ever released.  We had nearly ten thousand devices running automated tests daily, over a half million hours of active self-hosting use, over three and a half million hours of stress test passes, and eight and a half million hours of fully automated test passes.  We’ve had thousands of independent software vendors and early adopters testing our software and giving us great feedback. We are ready.

Will it truly be what they claim it is.  I guess we have to wait and see.  But iOS and Android is also going in light speed, they are constantly working on improving the technology and user friendliness. Bottom line, the end consumers are going to see some good pricing and rich features.  One of the advantage I see Windows phone 7 will have over iOS and Android is the integration with Microsoft Office.  Majority of the users use MS Office,  and Windows Phone 7 will integrate with Office seamlessly, even though iOS 4.1 and Android 2.2 can handle .docx and .xlsx  they have limitations.

iTunes is the central point of control for iPhone and since there are millions of iPod users iTunes installation is in millions.  Windows phone 7 obviously is going to integrate with Zune and we all know Zune is kinda low-low.  Zune didn’t go anywhere and I betMicrosoft has learned its lesson from it.  I really hope Windows Phone 7 is not going to be a flop like Zune.  Why ?  I want to see some competition and see some good choices for smart phones.  Android on the other hand doesn’t have a sync tool of its own.  You can copy stuffs to it as if its an external drive.
Even though I think there is going to be stiff competition, I personally feel iOS is a very fast moving target and is improving at a greater rate than others.  Steve Blamer and Eric Schmidt has to go Warp speed if they want to take out iOS.