mobile

I do usually try to not bash any particular company, in my blog posts. Every so often I may critique somebody and I like to think my criticism is factual and constructive. This time around, though, I will allow myself to go into a full-on ranting and smirking, because the person we are talking about is Mr. Steve Ballmer, the infamous CEO of Microsoft, and the subject is - his ridiculous "predictions" about iPhone.

I mean, we all understand why a Microsoft CEO would not love iPhone. It's also clear why he would try do diminish the importance of this revolutionary device. Still, the job of a CEO, especially a giant like Microsoft, is to be at least close to reality and not blurt random stupidities publicly.

Let's see what Ballmer was saying just a year ago:

"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance," said Ballmer. "It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get."
--- Source: ArsTechnica, April 2007.

And a year later, according to the report from Net Applications (Feb 2008), Safari on iPhone has 71% market share among mobile web-browsers in the US, leaving only 12% to the next runner-up, the child-product of Microsoft: Pocket IE.

Similarily, Canalys reports that as far as overall US "smart phone" market goes, iPhone, in just over a year, has gained 28% market share, only second to RIM (producer of Blackberry) that has 41%. If you take into account how long have the competitors been on the market (and those are wildly well-known brands like Palm, Nokia and others) and the fact that RIM has been selling its Blackberries to corporate clients in large bulks, for a while now and has tremendous head-start, the results are just amazing.

Back to Ballmer's "2-3% forecast" . Well, what can we say? Except state the obvious and say that we can't help feeling sorry for Microsoft when Bill Gates fully retires and the software giant is left to the mercy of Ballmer.

*smirk* (sorry, could not help it).

Now that I am an AT&T subscriber for my cellphone service (thanks, iPhone!), I decided to try some of the other goodies that AT&T has to offer, as well. I am part of the large [anti]social class of people who get physically uncomfortable if they can not access Internet for an extended period of time (and, yes, half an hour can be an extended period of time). Considering this personal deficiency, the first natural choice was to try the 3G mobile internet connectivity.

Unfortunately, iPhone does not support 3G. It only supports an older and slower EDGE technology. Furthermore, I can not use even EDGE from my laptop since iPhone does not support Bluetooth modem protocol and can not be used as a modem from a laptop. I was very upset with this shortcoming, when I first got iPhone. Considering that I use a Mac and iPhone is an Apple product as well, I was convinced that they would have the integration squared. I still think the only reason they don't is because AT&T has a separate service for that. You bet AT&T was not too excited by the possibility of iPhone cannibalizing that line of business for them.

Long story short, I went to a local AT&T store and signed-up for a separate data plan for laptops. They gave me a Sierra AirCard 875U USB modem. With an existing voice plan, I got it for just $150 after $100 mail-in-rebate and my monthly fees for 3G came to $60, which I believe is at $20 discount. All-in-all it was not a bad deal. I used to pay a comparable $40/month for a HotSpot access with T-mobile before. That, however works only at Starbucks and select other shops, whereas my 3G access works almost anywhere in urban areas and coverage will grow rapidly.