Posts Tagged ‘mobile’

Apples and Blackberries Growing Together

by Yaw Otchere
February 2, 2010
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Apple and Blackberries

Romeo and Juliet, Leonardo, Bella and Jacob, Apple and RIM. What do these pairs all have in common? They’re locked in relationships that are beautiful to imagine, but doomed from the start. For different reasons each pair has so much potential, but can never realize it.

The iPhone and the BlackBerry are two of the most polarizing technologies in the consumer domain. Ask the typical Blackberry user what they think of an iPhone and you’ll see their eyes narrow, and their nostrils flare. Ask an iPhone user what they think of Blackberries, and you’ll likely get some snarky answer about “apps for that” or web browsing. What if there was a way to bring both camps together, what if there was a way to allow at least one side, to experience in a small way, the beauty of working together. Turns out there is a way, but it will never happen. RIM needs to create a Blackberry Messenger App for the iPhone.

Why Should RIM Do It?

RIM should create the app because there’s money to be made, and there’s a platform to expand. This wouldn’t be any old iPhone App, it would be a premium app targeted at business users. RIM could charge $50 for the app, plus a $5 a month subscription and business users would still buy it in droves. Why? Because Blackberry Messenger is a key messaging platform in the business world, and companies want their employees to have access to it. Though Blackberries are dominant in the workplace, there is an increasing mix of smartphones types used, and if Blackberry Messenger remains closed, companies will have to look to other Instant Messaging (IM) platforms to bridge the gap between all their employees. What if instead of Blackberry Messenger, companies encouraged staff to use Google Talk, or MSN? People on any smartphone platform could chat easily, and one ingredient of the Blackberry special sauce would be that much less important. To fend off the wolves at the gate, and cement their status as the IM standard of business, Blackberry Messenger needs to become platform agnostic, and if they do it right, they could make a bucket load of cash in the process.

Why Should Apple Do It?

Apple should realize that every customer who buys the Blackberry Messenger App is a customer who’s sticking with the iPhone instead of getting a Blackberry. Blackberry Messenger is a killer feature that keeps the Blackberry heads and shoulders above the iPhone as a messaging device. Push e-mail is faster on Blackberry, but at least now there are ways to get it on the iPhone. Speeding up the e-mail client on the iPhone could close that gap. And sure, Apple could (and probably should) create a mobile iChat app to allow iPhone users to chat with each other, but it will be tough to entrench that as the same kind of de-facto standard that Blackberry Messenger has become in the business world. Rather than fight fire with fire, Apple should treat RIM like it does Google. Allow them some real estate on the iPhone and snare in even more customers on the strength of a competitor’s offerings. They can even work with RIM to make the interface more Apple-like so they don’t forget who’s device they’re using. Apple would have a great messaging system, RIM would have a nice new revenue stream, and everyone’s happy right? Not so fast …

Why It’ll Never Happen

Both Apple and RIM are companies who make their own hardware and software. Apple goes out of their way to make sure that their software only works with Apple products (ask anyone who tried to sync the Palm Pre with iTunes about that). They are not in the business of making their competitors products better. RIM is competing fiercely with Apple for dominance in the smartphone market, both in the consumer and the business segments. RIM wants to sell more Blackberries, not give people reasons to buy iPhones, and this move looks like it would be more help to Apple than RIM, but would it?

Think about the economics of a Blackberry Messenger App. Sure iPhone users could get at it, but Blackberry users would get it for FREE… and free is a powerful price. It would be easy to point to the value added of getting a Blackberry just based on the cost of using Blackberry Messenger on the iPhone.

Alas, this is probably just a pipe dream, and who knows maybe Blackberry Messenger PIN messaging will fall by the wayside as a business world messaging platform, but until it does, this is a great way to get apples and blackberries growing in the same garden.

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The Zack Morris Phone

by Lenny Laurier
November 24, 2009
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Motorola DynaTAC 8000x

New cellphones appear practically every month, and have evolve drastically over the decades. These devices promote an array of features that was once thought only to exist in sci-fi movies. As we journey into a future, innovation in this market has shown us that nothing impossible; but sometimes we need to know where we’ve been in order to see where we’re heading. So let’s take this chance to take a look at the cellphone that started it all.

Dr. Martin Cooper
Dr. Martin Coooper

Motorola was the first to engineer the cell phone. Motorola’s General Manager at the time, Dr. Martin Cooper, invented the cellphone and made the first mobile phone call on the street of New York in April 1973. Unlike today, a guy talking on a portable phone had people astonished as they stared at Dr. Cooper roaming the streets talking into this mysterious unit (kind of like when Bluetooth headset were first introduced and people look like crazy people talking to themselves). This guy must have had a great sense of humour since he made the first phone call to his rival Dr. Joel S. Engel, Head of Research at AT&T Bell Laboratories, who was trying to create the exact same thing.

Motorola release the first commercial cellphone, the Motorola DynaTac 8000x, in 1983. At a grand price tag of $3,995 US, the DynaTAC weighed 2.5 pounds and was 10 inches tall (sans antenna). You might have seen this phone on the 1990s sitcom Saved By The Bell. Zack Morris, the main character on the show, had the Motorola phone on the show now dubbed the ‘Zack Morris Phone’.

So there you have it, a little walk down memory lane. To closes off this session, here’s a video below of Mark-Paul Gosselaar, aka Zack Morris, on the Jimmy Fallon Show…

…and for kicks I thought I would throw in this cool video on the evolution of the cellphone:

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Need a Toronto Eaton Centre Map? There’s an App For That.

by Lenny Laurier
November 12, 2009
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Toronto Eaton Centre iPhone Application

I don’t know about you, but whenever I’m looking for a store in a shopping centre, there’s never a map in sight. I end up walking around in circles; finally find the store I’m looking for, only to coincidentally find a mall map right outside of it. Hey, I’m a man on a mission, venturing only into a mall knowing what I want, and where I want to look for it. It would be sweet if I could look it up on my phone, and save the hassles of exploring new territory. Now there’s an app for that (sorry couldn’t help it).

The Toronto Eaton Centre introduced their iPhone application this month to make holiday shopping, well, a little more joyous. The application has a list of features including store promotions, guest services information, ability to check your gift card balance, and (wait for it) an interactive mall map! You can also search through the list of stores available, by category or promotions, and save your favourite shops. And for those who love to stay connected, the app includes a Facebook and Twitter feature so you can tell the world that your shopping and your doing it at the Eaton Centre.

To help promote this app, the Eaton Centre is offering a chance to win a $250 gift card when you tell them about your iPhone App experience. You can download the app by searching ‘Toronto Eaton Centre’ through the App Store on your iPhone, or through iTunes on your computer.

Happy shopping.




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Moto Droid Is Coming To Telus

by Lenny Laurier
November 11, 2009
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1

Motorola Droid

Maybe not in time for the holiday season but in early 2010, the new Motorola Droid will be gracing us with its presences at a Telus Mobility store near you.  Right now the Droid is available to our American neighbours on Verizon Wireless, but soon, Canadians can enjoy it too.

The Droid runs off the Android Operating System, and for those who don’t know, it’s an open source mobile operating system built by Google that runs on various mobile devices ranging anywhere from mobile phones to netbooks.

The Droid is Motorola’s second Android 3G phone available, packed with a touchscreen interface, slide out full QWERTY keyboard, 16GB removable storage, WiFi, Bluetooth, 5MP camera, DVD quality video recording, GPS, and more (whoa, I think I ran out of breath).  It has a clean matte black exterior, and gold accents draped upon the speakers and side buttons.

The Droid will be available on Telus’ new GSM network, that launched earlier this month. So just like Rogers, you can drop in your Telus SIM card, and switch from phone to phone (if that’s your thing).




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