From Forbes Magazine:

Eventually the iPhone bigots will get to you, as they did to David Rivas, a Nokia vice president in charge of its smart phone software efforts. “You’re ignoring Japan, you’re ignoring Korea. The statement that somehow the Web has not been mobile until the iPhone is absurd and back to the point about parochialism,” he told a room full of venture capitalists and software developers at a conference in July organized by tech blog impresario Michael Arrington.

“Wake up!” someone heckled from the back of the room as Rivas spoke. Arrington, the Valley’s answer to Judge Judy, wasn’t buying it either. “I believe that Nokia and Symbian [the software that powers its smart phones] are irrelevant companies at this point,” he pronounced from the stage.

This is a huge day.

Apple has done what Palm, RIM, Microsoft, Motorola, SonyEricson,and Nokia have not: they have delivered a compelling mobile platform that matches sexy hardware with a functional operating system PLUS attracted developers PLUS created a true shopping / marketplace experience for users like me who want to use and buy mobile applications. The application store had the shelves stocked with apps, applications that people want to use–and buy!

Today is game changing day for the mobile marketplace! Apple wins.

Seeing Samsung‘s next-generation 256 GB SSD makes my mind contemplate the mobile devices just over the horizon. A 1.8 inch solid state drives with the capacity that was in servers not all that long ago. But the performance is perhaps more impressive: sequential data reads at 200MB per second, and writes at 160MB per second. Tiny computing devices will be capable of carrying whole libraries and still leave space for are own creations. Of course if all those devices come with HD video recording capabilities, then we’ll fill it up quickly. Better get on that 512 GB version Samsung.

The Yamaha notepad / keyboard hybrid concept: “Key for Journey.” This is a product design that I hope makes it into the real world. I love the Steve Jobs-like industrial design. I can almost smell the leather (anyone remember DigiScents?). Practically see the wear and oils in the leather on the notebook’s spine. Showing the keys through the leather is just so cool.

Ars Technica offers some great insight, including this market share quote from Gartner and unit sales growth chart from Apple:

The iPhone has managed to stay atop the news almost constantly since its launch last June €”and sales haven’t been too shabby either. Market research firm Gartner said that the company managed to capture 20 percent of smartphone sales during the third quarter of 2007, second only to RIM with the heavyweight BlackBerry at 39 percent.

Chart Data Source: Apple

I’m in this upload at about 30 seconds in.

What I like most about my Panerai: it’s a completely analog device. It’s an old-fashioned watch under a masculine 44mm case. I purposefully selected the manual wind movement over the automatic.

This marketing is a perfect match of the brand.

WE WISH YOU ALL THE BEST FOR THE NEW YEAR.

OFFICINE PANERAI
Marketing & Comunicazione
www.panerai.com <http://www.panerai.com/>

Now I remember. I’ll wait.

Although, it was nice to see that when I was playing with my wife’s iPhone last weekend, I noticed that the end a sentence and double space will insert a period. I think the spelling suggest/lookup on the iPhone is getting better.

When will Copy and Paste be there? I really want faster browsing with the FAT Safari mobile browser, so I need 3G. And that silly numeric vs. alpha keyboard.

I will wait.

Contacts: A Timeline of Networking

1878
New Haven District Telephone Co. publishes the first telephone directory. The one-page directory lists the names of the 50 businesses and residences that are accessible by telephone.

1906
The first Yellow Pages is published, in Detroit, according to AT&T archives.

1921
An Englishman begins to manufacture personal organizational systems (right) based on one he saw when serving in World War I. A secretary came up with the name Filofax.

1956
Arnold Neustadter (pictured left), patents the rotary card filing system, which was invented by his employee, Hildaur L. Neilsen.

1958
Mr. Neustadter brings the card-filing system to market as the Rolodex.

1992
At a Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Apple’s then-CEO John Sculley (right) shows off the Apple Newton, a device for storing personal data.

1996
Palm Computing debuts the first Palm Pilots — the Pilot 1000 and Pilot 5000.

1999
The first BlackBerry is introduced to the marketplace by Canadian company Research In Motion.

2007
Apple launches the iPhone.

Left to right: Palm Pilot, BlackBerry and iPhone

First, carriers have us over the barrel on what functionality the device will support (e.g., I’d try a BlackBerry Curve but ATT has removed WiFi support). Additionally, carriers offer similar yet different data and voice networks (CDMA/TDMA/GSM), requiring some efort.

The device manufacturers have to pick an OS to drive their machine. The OS has to work on a variety of devices and needs to be flexible, manage multiple radio frequencies/types (quad-band, Bluetooth, WiFi, etc.). Finally, it has to work for a consumer. It’s nearly impossible to hit a home run with a single device.

Which leads me to Google and Android. From the mouth of Eric Schmidt, “Android is the first truly integrated mobile operating system.” That seems like a bit of a stretch. Yes everyone else talked about it early in the week, but I waited. Which leads me to consider: “Can Google and myriad developers across the wireless industry really create a usable Mobile OS that device manufacturers, carriers, and “consumers” can use?”

It’s true that Andy Rubin has good credentials for the heading the task. The Sidekick had its own cult following. He did something right by nailing a specific target market with a device that hit the core needs of thumb communicating teens and young adults — although the “voice” use looked a bit strange when you had to put the brick up to your head.

Apple may have come close, but many have expressed they couldn’t do it with Rev 1.0 of the iPhone (including the opinion of yours truly). From what I read and hear, lots of users like the user experience, however.

I can’t help but think of Nokia‘s effort with Symbian (and Motorola, and Samsung, and others that have long since dropped off the bandwagon). Symbian is a very capable and powerful OS, but it’s missed the mark somewhere along the line (personally, as I learned from my imported E61, there were way too many steps to do any one thing).

Palm gave up and sold what appeared to be a great head-start OS to Access, long after their head start was passe. Access has yet to do anything other than wave their arms every 6 months with a new announcement in the press telling the world they are still alive — although their product roadmap appears dead.

Now back to David Pogue. In this article, he has a hilarious quote about Microsoft Windows Mobile:

Frankly, Windows Mobile 6 is a mess. Common features require an infinitude of taps and clicks, and the ones you need most are buried in menus. Apparently the Windows Mobile 6 team learned absolutely nothing from Windows Mobile 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

So, here’s to Google’s effort at cracking the code on the new OS war: The Mobile OS. Heaven knows that many have lobbed many great suggestions (Peter Rojas at Engadget on Palm OS, David Pogue at The New York Times on Windows Mobile, Walt Mossberg).

Can Apple get it right w/ R2 of the iPhone? Will Apple “truly” open up a SDK that will appease developers (I think if this was here today, Android would be a yawner news).

Will Access ship a killer Linux OS — or will Motorola beat them to the punch with something that gets on to other smart phones?

Will Nokia be left to the low-end, non-smart phone market?

Can RIM continue to dominate the business user segment with their BlackBerry brand that appears to be a strong, yet pretty isolated from the interests of the third-party developer community?

Check back in a year.