In a summer of handset debuts that already includes the Palm Pre, Apple’s iPhone 3GS, and soon, Research in Motion’s BlackBerry Tour 9630, add one more: The myTouch 3G, T-Mobile’s second Google Android phone. The carrier officially introduced the device today and said customers can begin reserving it on July 8.
Looks like Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster’s second estimate of Apple’s weekend iPhone sales underestimated demand just as badly as his first. Apple didn’t sell 500,000 units of the iPhone 3GS over the weekend, as Munster first predicted. Nor did the company sell 750,000 as he said in a research note this morning. It sold over one million. Moreover, downloads of Apple’s new iPhone 3.0 software, launched last Wednesday, have already reached six million.
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.
Question for you: What was the best-selling consumer smartphone in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2009? What’s that? Apple’s iPhone? Wrong. According to market researcher NPD, it was Research in Motion’s BlackBerry Curve, which slipped past the iconic device in market share bolstered by Verizon’s Buy One, Get One promotion.
T-Mobile’s G1, the first smartphone based on Google’s Android operating system, really is as cheap as it looks. According to a new theoretical tear-down by research firm iSuppli, the G1 costs about 10 percent less to manufacture than Apple’s iPhone 3G.
With the release of the first device to support Google’s Android mobile operating system less than a day away and a second already in development at Motorola, Google is making good on a promise it made when Android debuted: to make the platform available under a progressive, developer-friendly open-source license.
Beyond the wet-your-pants whipsawing of the financial markets, the week ending Oct. 17, 2008, was one in which Apple figured prominently. On Tuesday, the company unveiled revisions to its MacBook Pro, MacBook and MacBook Air portables–as well as its new LED Cinema Display. It also issued a Steve Jobs health update: The Apple CEO’s blood pressure is 110/70.
Looks like somebody’s got a case of the Mondays–Research in Motion. Shares in the company slipped more than 6 percent to a new 52-week low today. This after charting a new 52-week low last Friday driven by the 27 percent drop they took after RIM issued a lower-than-expected forecast for the current period. That decline was the company’s steepest in eight years and belied CEO Jim Balsillie’s claims that emerging competition from new handset makers isn’t undermining RIM’s competitive position.
T-Mobile has abandoned the 1GB monthly usage cap it originally set for its forthcoming Android G1 phone. Seems the company finally saw the irony in offering subscribers a $25-a-month unlimited-data plan and then penalizing them for excessive data usage.
Color Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster unimpressed by T-mobile’s G1, the first mobile phone to use Google’s Android mobile operating system. Though the device is certain to be a viable competitor in the current mobile market, it’s no iPhone. Apple, says Munster, has nothing to worry about. The G1 will have “little or no impact” on near-term iPhone sales.
The first Android-powered handset debuted this morning at a T-Mobile launch event in New York. Manufactured by HTC, the G1 is largely as anticipated. Peter Chou, CEO of HTC describes it as “iconic,” but that’s being a bit generous, I think. In design, the device seems to borrow quite a bit from the T-Mobile Sidekick, and its touchscreen GUI clearly owes a thing or two to Apple’s iPhone.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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