Earlier this week at the smartphoneshow in London, Nokia (NYSE:NOK) EVP, Kai Oistamo said, "It's time to recognize that today's smart phones are full-fledged computers. We should call them what they really are." You can read up on the rest of the interview at EETimes - Nokia's naked ambition: Moving beyond cellphones. Oistamo had changed the title of his speech from The Future of Smartphones to The Future of Computing.
In the meanwhile, the IBM (NYSE:IBM) Institute for Business Value published Go mobile, grow... The question: Should mobile Internet services be the next big growth gamble for mobile device makers? For the record, we think they overlooked digital coupons (see The Cost of Living). Both the EETimes article and the IBM Study are worth reading.
Remember the 5150?
How about the Simon, do you remember the Simon?
Here is another quote, this time from Steve Jobs after this past week's quarterly conference call: "I think that the traditional game in the phone market has been to produce a voice phone in a hundred different varieties. But, as software starts to become the differentiating technology of this product category, I think that people are going to find that a hundred variations presented to a software developer is not very enticing. And most of the competitors in this phone business do not really have much experience in a software platform business."
Do you think folks understand that Apple is a software platform company first and a hardware vendor as a means to an end? Hardware, whether PC or mobile, is only a commodity business if you approach the market that way. Just because the 5150 and Simon were not big hits does not mean it is not time to revisit the opportunity. The Newton was not a successful, but the iPhone is. Just why is that? With the new PASemi-Apple SoC there will be a software platform that will change the industry and a massive disintermediation of the long-standing companies that understood the new rules too late will begin. Others will follow Apple, but others will have a lot of catching up to do.
The Community is the Computer - a Super Computer. Go Zig!
5 comments:
Apple is an iPod/iPhone company that has managed to build out a very good software infrastructure for the purchase of music, movies, software, and other items as they see fit.
The Newton came way before this infrastructure existed. If it had existed 10 years ago, things would have been different for many reasons, the biggest being that the PC industry didn't have the monoculture of OSes it does now (there was more than one Windows lineup, Mac OS Classic, and a lot more fragmentation in Linux then with regards to different distributions having market share), and broadband was not as pervasive.
Apple took advantage of the timing to build out their infrastructure, and do it the right way. The move to broadband in the USA plays into it. In addition, the move off of the Windows 9x lineage of OSes means that Apple doesn't have to support two different versions of the same software for the Windows platform. Same goes for Mac OS with Classic and OS X.
You won't see the PA Semi ARM SOCs from Apple in anything not having their logo on it. You will see a device capable of real usage as a computer, and one with Flash, Java, and possibly other technologies on it running a desktop web browser. I would not put it past them to manage to get iWork running on it so you can edit Word documents on the go.
Apple is a company that has managed to retain tight control over distribution of browser plug-ins to its devices under OS X. I would not be surprised to see Jobs touting full Adobe Flash and Java, not Flash Lite and MIDP, in the PA Semi based iPhone and iPod lineup. I would also not be surprised to see iWork running on this, and an extension of the device's Bluetooth capabilities to allow for keyboard usage, along with full HD Video out for the docks. I don't see mouse usage becoming pervasive for a device like this with Apple's usage of multi-touch trackpads, and the fact that the iPhone already can support it.
21st century home computer, indeed.
>You won't see the PA Semi ARM
>SOCs from Apple in anything
>not having their logo on it.
Yes, you won't see a PA Semi ARM anywhere, because it does nor exist.
...not yet, but you *certainly* will.
R&B :-)
So what happens to PA Semi's POWER arch SoC? Does it get dumped in the trash for an ARM SoC? OR do we get it?
Dumped in the trash is about right.
Apple bought PA Semi because PA Semi is a bunch of ex-ARM engineers; Dan Doberpul invented StrongARM (which became Intel XScale which is now Marvell XScale, and is the core of nearly every ARM device you care to buy these days.
Apple needed some way of keeping in the ARM core market - and advancing in it - without being hit by certain things, like nVidia buying PortalPlayer (who provided the chips for the iPod) or Intel selling XScale to Marvell. This would give nVidia and Marvell a strong position on telling Apple what to do, which Steve Jobs doesn't like.
So yeah the PA6-T is in the trash (except for existing military customers) and Apple are using the design team rather than the existing technology, at least this is far, far more likely.
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