Who do YOU trust more with your money?

Who do YOU trust more with your money?

4" iPhone all but confirmed

Interesting.

So, 4”. Possibly (probably?) implemented by retaining the screen width and adding height. LTE almost definitely. Thinner. 

I hope it has a curved back because it feels nicer to hold. But I understand the why if it doesn’t (antenna ring and bigger battery). 

Retina MacBook Pro weeks away?

Bloomberg:

The MacBook Pro machines, to be unveiled at Apple’s annual developers conference starting June 11, also will feature high- definition screens like those on the iPhone and iPad, as well as flash memory to cut startup times and extend battery life, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans haven’t been made public.

Speaking of platforms...

David Smith reports on iOS 5.1.1 update statistics:

The data for 4 days shows a clear and very consistent progression. Users are updating at a rate of roughly 7.5%/day, leading to a total adoption of around 30% so far.

Nearly a third of his user base in 4 days, for an update with no new features and no marketing. Ah, the sweet hum of a well running platform.

In related news, Intel's first smartphone is out

No fanfare, but that’s probably because its availability is very limited. It looks like the first US bound device will be by Motorola some time this year. The performance is very good, though graphics are a bit lacking. I’m not sure if the power efficiency is good enough to put Apple on notice, but it’s certainly competitive with many of last year’s flagship Android devices.

(Also, that a powerful new device released well into 2012 is running Android 2.3 speaks volumes about the state of the Android “platform”.)

The Apple-Intel-Samsung Ménage à Trois

Another great piece by Jean-Louis Gassée:

The ARM-based chips in iDevices come from a foundry owned by Samsung, Apple’s mortal smartphone enemy. Intel supplies x86 chips to Apple and its PC competitors, Samsung included, and would like nothing more than to raid Samsung’s ARM business and make a triumphant Intel Inside claim for Post-PC devices. And Apple would love to get rid of Samsung, its enemy supplier, but…

Of course there is a ‘but’. Now that Apple has complete control over their CPU designs (to great success in power efficiency, for that matter) and have invested several hundred million dollars assembling a team to get them there, it’s very unlikely they will give it all up and switch to Intel’s off the shelf designs.

Android vs. iPhone, business model edition

Apple collects the industry’s highest subsidy for the iPhone.
Google pays manufacturers and operators to use Android.

Here’s Nikesh Arora, Google senior vice president and chief business officer, in Google’s latest earnings call:

I’m not going to talk about specific of the TAC [Traffic Acquisition Costs] on mobile. But as you know, we get people using our devices both organically as well as through our distribution partnerships with carriers and OEMs. And typically, the OEMs and carriers participate in some of the economics that are on the Android marketplace or Google Play and some of them participate in the economics around Google Search just the way we would do syndication on the Web platform, which you do with many partners around the world. We have similar deals on the mobile front.

In other words, Google kicks back a cut of ad revenue and app sales to Android handset manufactures and carriers.

This is from the first in a series of upcoming articles by Horace Dediu on the economics of Android. I’m looking forward to learning more.

John Paczkowski Confirms New iOS Maps App

Sources tell 9to5Mac that Apple will abandon Google’s mapping back-end in the next major iteration of iOS, replacing it with a brand-new mapping application powered by Apple technology. We’ve independently confirmed that this is indeed the case. Sources describe the new Maps app as a forthcoming tentpole feature of iOS that will, in the words of one, “blow your head off.”

It has to include built-in turn by turn navigation, right?

The Subsidy

Yes the iPhone collects the industry’s highest carrier subsidy. But I simply do not understand how this is evil, wrong, bad, unsustainable dot dot dot.

  • If a device maker creates a phone that customers want more than any other device,
  • If a device maker creates a phone that brings dumbphone owners into stores to go purchase their first smartphone,
  • If a device maker creates a phone that receives the highest customer satisfaction ratings,
  • If a device maker creates a phone that results in the happiest customers with the lowest likelihood of switching carriers,

Then why the fuck shouldn’t the device maker be rewarded handsomely for its efforts, and so as to ensure they continue creating the best smartphones for years to come? 

I just don’t get it. 

Nobody seems to understand what Jeff Bezos is doing. Does he?

I don’t often agree with Farhad, but I 100% do on Amazon. Insane valuation aside, this is the key reason why I won’t invest in the company:

Amazon, by comparison, is a black box. It’s got so many different businesses across so many different product types—it just opened a store that will sell you industrial supplies, it bought a company that makes robots, it’s looking to produce movies and sitcoms, and somewhere in there it also sells books and music and computers and refrigerators and server space and on and on—that it’s difficult to discern any of the company’s essential goals.

We don’t know where Amazon expects to make money from in the future. Indeed, we barely know where Amazon makes money from now. The company refuses to divulge even the most basic stats about its business. Amazon’s earnings calls are a comedy of opacity and misdirection; you’d have a better chance getting a guard at Buckingham Palace guard to crack a smile than to get an Amazon exec to accidentally tell you about the company’s business.

They’re out-Googling Google. Both companies are throwing shit everywhere to see what sticks, but at least with Google we know all the money comes from ads.