Know thy enemy...
 

... allegorically speaking that is. In this article Mike Elgan (please do not include any personal attacks in your replies) argues why he thinks that the iPhone will continue to rule the market in spite of Gartner's predictions that it is to fall to 4th place. Gartner says that Symbian, Android and BlackBerry will overtake the iPhone, and Maemo will remain in the low, under 5% share.

To me what is interesting is that he actually lays out a few interesting strategies for success that Maemo and Nokia developers should be aware of, both to defend against and to embrace. See what you think.

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/fea...ue-to-Rule.htm

Re: Know thy enemy...
 

He has a point, but what exactly are these network effects apps that he talks about? As far as I know all the social networking apps are just interfaces to websites, and you don't need to have an iPhone to communicate with your friends on them.

Also, Symbian won't overtake iPhone OS. It's already way ahead.

Re: Know thy enemy...
 

Mind you, I own an iPhone. But I don't think that it quite "owns" the market as much as it's owning mindshare right now.

And the Kindle... I think Barnes & Noble's nook with sharing/wifi actually has a slight edge imho too.

Re: Know thy enemy...
 

had an arguement with an iphone user telling me that it can do anything.....its quite bothersome :(

Re: Know thy enemy...
 

Here is the reply I left on his site:

Re: Know thy enemy...
 

I've had that same argument. Pulled out my N810, viewed a site with Flash on it. Then opened up terminal and gained root.

Asked them to do the same. Smiled, and turned... resumed my phone call on my iPhone.

They should have qualified that the iPhone does everything they want. For me, it falls way short.

Re: Know thy enemy...
 

If you take into account the small screen estate you have on a mobile device, e.g. custom apps instead of the social networks' (Facebook, Myspace, whatever) do make sense IMHO. Although I prefer the N900's browser over Mobile Safari on the iPhone/iPod Touch it's much easier to read and post stuff via the facebook app on my iPod Touch than via the Facebook web page on the N900. The page was designed for a much larger screen.
But the app angle is something we can change as a community, right ;)? And then again, custom apps can make use of the specific hardware features and that is something the good iPhone apps do. Considering the possibilities the N900 and Maemo5/6 offer, the vitality of the community and the lack of Apple like AppStore politics, there are certainly some very cool and interesting things ahead of us.

Re: Know thy enemy...
 

That wasn't my point. Network effects will be irrelevant unless there's a service that can only be accessed through an iPhone app. Any platform can have a Facebook interface.

Re: Know thy enemy...
 

I think he was talking about applications that allow interaction between users, person to person. For example, he mentioned "Business card apps". I don't know what he is referring to, but maybe there is an app that allows you to beam (through IR or BT) your "ebusiness card" to another iPhone user. If the application is proprietary and only works between iPhones people will see it as an advantage to have an iPhone to be amongst the in crowd. Just an example of what I think he is referring to.

Re: Know thy enemy...
 

OK, person to person IRL makes sense. But it would have to be a killer app AND hard to copy. Other platforms already exchange business cards, for example.