"Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right"

Avram Piltch of Laptop Magazine writes:

I’m the last person on earth who wanted to believe Steve Jobs when he told Walt Mossberg at D8 that “Flash has had its day.” I took it as nothing more than showmanship when Jobs shared his thoughts on Flash and wrote that “Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices.” After spending time playing with Flash Player 10.1 on the new Droid 2, the first Android 2.2 phone to come with the player pre-installed, I’m sad to admit that Steve Jobs was right. Adobe’s offering seems like it’s too little, too late.

At LAPTOP, we’re still testing mobile Flash on a variety of handsets, but the early returns are a mixed bag, with some sites performing really well and other “unoptimized” videos and games causing restless thumb syndrome. When Flash 10.1 for Android is good, it’s great, but when it’s bad, it can make even the harshest Apple critic want to e-mail Steve Jobs an apology video playing in HTML 5.

Full story here.

File under "Least surprising news..."

From CNN — The BlackBerry Torch isn't setting the smartphone world ablaze.

"Research In Motion and AT&T sold no more than 150,000 of the devices over the weekend, according to estimates by RBC Capital Markets and Stifel Nicolaus analysts. By comparison, Apple's iPhone 4 sold 1.7 million units in its first weekend of sales."

More huge Apple numbers — 50 million iPads a year?

It took years before other manufacturers had credible competition for the iPhone. It's doubtful that the lag time for iPad competitors will be anywhere near as long, but the iPad's early success makes it an extremely formidable opponent.

Henry Blodget at Business Insider quotes hedge-fund manager Jeff Matthews on some amazing near-term numbers for the iPad:

We got to talking about Apple, and Jeff tossed out a startling prediction for Apple's iPad business:

Apple, Jeff said, will soon sell 50 million iPads a year. Given the amazing start the device has had, this forecast is hardly wild: 4 million iPads have been sold already, and ~12 million should be sold this year. So selling 50 million in a couple of years doesn't sound like a stretch, especially if the price comes down.

And to think- neither the iPhone nor iPad were even on the market barely three years ago...

Needham's big Apple numbers…

Fortune's Philip Elmer-DeWitt outlines some thoughts on Apple's amazing potential- from Needham analyst Charlie Wolf. The three things that surprised Wolf the most:

• Explosive iPad sales. "We forecast that iPad sales would reach 20 million in 2019, the final year in our valuation exercise. iPad sales are already tracking over 12 million annually even before a full international rollout. Meanwhile, the device remains in chronic backlog."
• A shift in the Mac's trajectory. "Mac sales are tracking to 14 million units in calendar 2010, more than 50% higher than the number we previously forecast for the year."
• Rapid iPhone upgrades. "The recent iPhone 4 launch indicates that current iPhone owners are upgrading much faster than we previously assumed. This will increase total iPhone sales even as the installed base of iPhones grows roughly in line with our previous forecast."

"In our view," Wolf writes, "Apple's market capitalization has the potential to exceed our estimate. That's because Apple is a small fish in three very large ponds."

Elmer-DeWitt: "The three ponds: the worldwide PC market (Mac has 4+%), the smartphone market (iPhone has 14%) and the tablet computer market (for now the iPad has it all to itself)."

Wolf has raised his AAPL price target from $280 to $375(!!). Article with Wolf's valuation model here.

Apple Q3 results blow past expectations- "Antennagate" over…

Pretty simple:

(Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) reported results that blew past Wall Street's expectations, boosted by robust sales of Mac computers, sending its shares 3 percent higher.

Apple's stellar financial performance in the June quarter helped ease investor fears, and may silence a chorus of critics who have been hammering the company over its handling of the iPhone 4 "Antennagate" controversy revolving around complaints about signal loss on the new gadget.

COMMENTARY:

ASHOK KUMAR, ANALYST WITH RODMAN AND RENSHAW:

"These were blowout numbers. The iPhone 4 units came in weaker than expected primarily due to the product launch, with supply constraints. But on all other measures, the company significantly exceeded guidance.

"If you put it in perspective, the original iPod took 7 quarters to ship a million units. With the initial iPhone, it took only 70 days to reach the 1 million unit rate.

"For iPad, it reached the one mln mark in under 30 days, and the iPhone 4 shipped 1.7 million units in the first three days.

"The iPhone 4 has been in a class by itself in terms of volume. Looking ahead with multiple carrier agreements, the story remains intact. The primary driver will be the iPhone.

"Bounces off me and sticks to you..."

The reactions of other cell phone manufacturers to Antennagate have been interesting. According to Seth Weintraub at Fortune, the four companies that Steve Jobs mentioned at the press event — HTC, Nokia, Samsung and RIM — "all issued statements saying that they've tested and the death grip doesn't affect their phones."

But numerous YouTube videos are demonstrating exactly the opposite. And Nokia even has an illustration online showing where not to touch the Nokia 6230i -- take a look at page 15 of the Nokia 6230i user manual…

As Rene Ritchie, of TiPb points out, Apple has "changed the dialog from death-touch — a single point of antenna trouble on iPhone 4 — to death-grip — a device-wide point of antenna trouble faced by the entire industry."

And, via Gruber, a compilation of manufacturer recommendations on how not to hold their phones- at the aptly named dontholditwrong.tumblr.com.

I suppose this whole story is another example of the way Apple and the iPhone have transcended the technology arena. They are now cultural touchstones as well, and any controversy acquires resonance beyond the traditional tech environment.

Antenna problems for other mobile phones…

John Gruber at Daring Fireball is doing a great job of collecting videos that show antenna problems for other mobile phones- very similar to what the iPhone 4 has gotten so much attention for. Other phones exhibiting this issue include:

• Palm Pre
• HTC Incredible
• Nexus One
• BlackBerry 9650

All of these phones are recommended by Consumer Reports — which has been condemning the iPhone 4.

Note that Gruber jokes about accusations of Apple partisanship- "My next payola check from Apple is going to be a doozy." That's the nice thing about calling oneself the "Apple Fanboy Dude" — all the petty bickering about editorial balance pretty much goes away…

The iPhone's notification problem…

In the interest of setting expectations for this blog, I thought I'd post something negative about the iPhone: Notifications.

They're a disaster. There's no way to review notifications once they've been acknowledged, and they tend to stack up- especially since push notifications were added to iOS. I had been hoping that Apple would do something about notifications in iOS 4, but no such luck, so far.

One of the things about being so far ahead of most of the industry is having the flexibility to let certain things slide for a while- sort of like copy/paste being MIA for two years, until iOS 3. But Apple really needs to do something about notifications. The situation will only get worse with the addition of local notifications- one of the seven new multitasking services in iOS 4. This is where even an Apple fanboy can be grateful for Android, and the fire it's lighting under Apple- at least in some areas...

What's the deal with Daniel Lyons/Fake Steve?

What's the deal with Daniel Lyons/Fake Steve? Have you seen his Newsweek column? It's titled, "Apple’s Rotten Response." It's a half-baked hit job. Lyons ponders, "I wonder if panic has started to set in at Apple yet."

Ummm, Daniel? Even from NYC, I can predict that the answer to that is, "No."

I really enjoyed the "Fake Steve Jobs" blog for a long time (personal fave: FSJ's meeting with Yoko Ono). But it would seem that Mr. Lyons has gone around the bend- or more likely, it's just link bait. And here I am, reinforcing that strategy. I feel soiled.

Best take on Antennagate, so far

Best take on Antennagate, so far. And it comes from Devin Coldewey at CrunchGear:

...we found ourselves groping in a dark and crowded echo chamber, grasping at factual straws and thrusting them into the faces of everyone we encountered. How little it accomplished! Apple is temporarily humbled, but they would have been one way or another. But they have the benefit of being unfairly set upon, of being able to quote hundreds of articles spewing FUD and unconfirmed nonsense — after all this, they get to play the victim card! That’s the real Antennagate.

Unfortunately, the solution is an impossible one. This is because the solution is discretion. Discretion and restraint are things that have more or less disappeared, since the benefits of being first and wrong outweigh the benefits of being late and right. The short-term benefits, I should say, in the form of traffic and popularity — very important metrics to the powers that be (advertisers and such). The long-term benefits of being a reliable source for news and analysis are becoming more and more difficult to discern, which is disturbing to me. Yet I still believe, and this whole thing has made me believe more, that perspective and discretion are as important as ever — and probably only as rare as they ever were to begin with. I’m not going to get all emotional on you here and say “oh no journalism is dying,” as if I know a thing about that, but let’s be honest: sometimes journalism can be pretty hard to find — even if you think you know where to look.

My first post

This won't just be fanboy stuff. That's just a clever name....