Mobile Musings: Captain Obvious

Mobile Musings is a weekly column where I take my thoughts on several subjects and basically think out loud.

LTE WINDOWS PHONES ARRIVING IN 2012

• In a rather obvious “rumor” its astonishing to see tech bloggers reporting that LTE flavored Windows Phones would be arriving in 2012.  It was already announced that the platform would be supporting LTE in 2012 and that Nokia was assertively pushing to get a LTE phone into the US market.  The addition of HTC LTE Windows Phone coming in early 2012 is a plus.  I’d like to remind you that moving forward the plan has already been stated that rolling releases of Windows Phones would be coming.  No one big launch per year, again a middle ground between Apple and Android.

Android Activation Numbers Inflated?

• I seen several friends get Android smartphones activated on Boost Mobile but without the need to have a data plan.  It got me to thinking how many people activate Android phones (which Google does count in their activation numbers) that aren’t really using these smartphones as nothing more than glorified feature phones?  Its not hard to outpace your competitors when you basically have a monopoly of the pay-as-you-go market.  There are no iPhones or Windows Phones sold this way.  Lets all be real, people love iPhones a lot more than they do Androids and with the discounted sales price of older iPhone models selling like hotcakes something just wasn’t adding up with Android continuing to dust Apple in marketshare.

Apple Releases Siri Helps Santa Advert

• You really have to hand it to Apple.  They have the cajones to promote features that their competitors not only possess but implement in better ways.  The latest such case is the newly released Santa TV Ad for the iPhone 4S starring, you guessed it, Siri.

Oh Woe Is RIM

• In what only can be describe as Must Read PR RIM inexplicably announced during the company’s report that the first BlackBerry 10 OS based phones won’t be launching until Q3/Q4 of 2012.  This comes on the heels of Microsoft making the near fatal mistake of doing the same sort of delaying of revamped platform releases.  Unlike Microsoft, RIM doesn’t have signficant other cash cows to keep the boat afloat and Windows Mobile was never the main source of revenue for Microsoft either.  To put this into perspective by the time RIM releases a single BB10 device Windows Phone 8 will have been launched, Apple’s iPhone 5 will have saturated the market and Android will have moved on to Quad Core behemoths.  In short, RIM’s BB10 devices will arrive late, be based on specs that will be outdated at release and without any significant differentiating feature.  There is a 50/50 chance RIM won’t make it to Q3 of next year.

Video Now?

This will be a weekly column released every Monday at 10am EST.  I feel like a lot of my sharp wit and the flavor of the topics covered is lost in using the print only medium.  So my question for you, the reader, is would you like to see a video segment included as well. Tons of graphics and really cool ideas are just waiting to be explored.  Personally I hope the feedback is yes you all want video.

Thanks for tuning in to read this week’s pilot episode of Mobile Musings.