Technosailor.com

It’s funny. Comical even. A few weeks ago, I wrote that The iPhone is to Smartphones as IE6 was to Browsers. Most of the readers of that article agreed with me but almost all had a “but, but, but…” argument. This is because the iPhone is one sexy beast to users, even though AT&T can’t seem to support the iPhone, as we also noted. More after the jump.

Chances are, if you are reading this blog, then you have some affinity to technology and that you’re in the business of technology (whether directly, or using technology to do your job – and I don’t mean having a computer on your desk at work). This is a pretty tech-savvy crowd around these parts so I’m guessing that most of you own a smartphone of some sort. Many have iPhones. Perhaps as many have BlackBerrys. A few of you are sad, sad people who own Treos.

A swath of new smartphones have just hit the market and, though I don’t claim to be a gadget or phone blogger (Really, you need to go read Boy Genius and Gizmodo for a far more geeky and informative analysis of all the various devices that hit the market), I do know that I’m a businessman and entrepreneur. I know that, from my perspective, there are key principles and requirements in any phone.

Since the launch of the original iPhone almost two years ago, it has been the position of this journalist, that the iPhone is not equipped, nor designed to be a business class phone. Although Apple has done a lot to address the concerns raised by many around the time of the original launch, such as third party apps and 3G speed, there are still inherent (and potentially unsolvable) problems with the phone.

Last night I spent the evening rubbing shoulders with some of the best and brightest traditional (and some online) marketers in the Capital Wasteland Region at a holiday party (There are many of them this time of year, are there not?).

As I stood there talking with a frequent reader of this blog, who also happened to work at Potomac Tech Wire, we got to discussing lessons learned from various times in our careers. I remember distinctly one of these moments from my days at b5media, which challenged me to remember that even though you think you know your job, career, industry or environment… you really don’t.

It was a Thursday night, like any other Thursday night. My son was in bed and my wife and I were dlipping around channels. One of our favorite shows, The Unit had just gone off at 10pm when all of the sudden, my Blackberry started buzzing. Annoyed, I glanced at it and saw alerts pouring in that the b5media servers were going down.

Quick post here to make a request for contact inside Verizon Wireless. The reasons are simple.

Yesterday, they along with Blackberry manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) bombed the much-hyped Blackberry Storm launch. Speculations by Boy Genius Report seem legitimate – that Verizon implemented a downgrade on the phone operating system just before rollout causing a significant shortage in supplies. This is a failed launch and there is no legitimate excuse, I’m sorry.

Since the iPhone came out a year and a half ago, mobile app development has gone into an iPhone-only mode of development. Mostly. The web interface has made it much more conducive to providing a real rich environment for web applications and now that the iPhone 3G has arrived, apps are being produced left and right.

It’s all great, except Apple still has a minority market share in mobile devices. By mobile device, I am referring to smart phones: iPhone, Treo, Blackberry, etc.