(Pat Moorehead from AMD has been doing some great writing lately about the MID vs the Smartphone. And as my response to his post went over the 300 word count I figured it would be better presented as a post and backlink to his AMD blog.)
Patrick asks, "Where would you place your bet: future Apple iPhone or a future MID?"
Patrick I think you are right on with this post, except for one point. The iPhone is an awesome device, but not the smartphone for all of us. In a recent opportunity I had to choose between converting to an iPhone or staying with my Blackberry Curve 8900. I went so far as to put my "trade" offer up on Craigslist. And I NEARLY did it.
And then I was walking down the street in San Francisco typing with my left hand when I understood why 90% of all the phones in first class on the flight out were Blackberries. I was having no problem composing a few paragraphs quickly, with accurate punctuation, spelling and capitalization. Do that with an iPhone.
So I agree that the smartphone is taking over the mobile space and will continue to dominate the netbook as a 2nd platform of choice. But I also believe there is plenty of room for improvement in the various interface options we have. While great for gaming, the iPhone is a sad text entry device. I am hearing that a recent speech-to-text app is now available for FREE, and that it works. Still, I will take my qwerty keyboard every time. (No wonder RIM profit was up 59% in the recently completed quarter.)
Your summary: "I believe future MIDs won’t have the horsepower or features required to tackle the future applications and future usage models only run on future notebooks and even if the cloud can provide the horsepower needed, pervasive, mobile, and fast access to the cloud is years away as LTE doesn’t start its ramp until 2014."
I had to google LTE and cloud to get a handle on what you were referring to. Here's something I found related to your topic from TelecomAsia. (LTE def: Long Term Evolution)
“Over 50% of our data traffic happens at home during peak hours, and smartphones have driven our data traffic up ten times,” said Softbank chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son in a keynote speech at the Mobile Asia Congress. “We need Wi-Fi to serve that traffic and give our customers a rich media experience.
“Of course we intend to migrate to LTE, but it’s not good enough to support customers when they use mobile internet at home,” Son said. “I use my nose to breathe, but when I am feeling aggressive or excited, I need to use my mouth to breathe as well. Wi-Fi is the mouth – it helps you breathe better.” from TelecomAsia.net
SUMMARY: So as far as LTEs and WiFis and MIDs vs iPhones vs RIMs vs Androids… I'm going to put my money on IIDs, or Innovative Internet Device. We haven't seen the future of mobile computing yet, but Apple appears to be setting up a high-powered demo in San Francisco around the time of CES.
So stay tuned. The Knowledge Navigator might be closer than we think.
@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/Mobile-Internet
Update TwitterVenn today 12-24-09 Says the Blackberry is going to rule in 2010:
tweets about iphone, blackberry and android
