myTouch? Seriously?
by John Paczkowski
Posted on June 17, 2009 at 5:00 AM PT
T-Mobile’s follow-up to the G1 is finally on its way to market. The carrier is expected to announce details of its second Android-based handset next week with an eye toward launching it later this summer.
Called the T-Mobile myTouch 3G, the device is similar in design to the HTC Magic, an Android device currently sold by Vodafone UK (VOD). Like Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, it features a touchscreen but no physical keyboard. And it’s said to integrate voice-activated search, video recording and enhanced browsing, thanks to Cupcake, otherwise known as Android 1.5.
When it goes on sale, the myTouch 3G will be the second Android-based phone to hit the market from a major carrier in the states, but by the end of the year it will be one of many. Google (GOOG) expects some 18 Android devices to arrive at market this year.
Comments
Is this going to be a repeat of what happened to Apple way back when it was a clear leader in “PC” technology, and along came the generic PC in many forms at many price points?
In my local discount store there is a whole isle devoted to iPod compatible docking devices, by companies like Bose, Sony, etc.
But as far as I know there is no iPod docking station compatible player not made by Apple. Why not?
Instead of building an open standard, Apple has built a proprietary standard that has allowed a self serving ecology to be built up around its products. This is not a stupid thing to do, Microsoft has been doing it for years Facebook is poised to do the same, Amazon, Twitter, Myspace, and Google too, although I think Google is far less guilty of this than most.
Could a successful iPod/iPhone ecology not have been built on fully open standards? Or if so, would Apple not have profited from it? Questions we may be asking ourselves in a few years when cell phones and music players (cameras, TVs and a lot of other electronic devices) take their place as specialty computers and users forget to be interested in what version of the operating system (or which operating system) they are running or whether they have the very latest model.
What will be the new focus of Apple at that time? I hope they are thinking about that.
Posted by Mac Beach at June 17th, 2009 at 12:41 pm