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Rory Cellan-Jones.

re "..selling lots of phones.."

I'd like to know what percentage of phones are actually bought, ie not supplied or upgraded as part of a contract or payment plan. (my guess, less than one-third)

"Watch out, smartphone customers: the battle for your minds is about to get intense."

good thing 'they' only mess with our minds, could have been worse, we could be .

I find the optimism/arrogance of MS and Nokia pretty staggering - in my opinion they are being left in the dust by the and Android devices that are light years ahead of anything that they produce at the moment. Is anyone seriously going to argue that the isn't ten times more exciting than any of these upcoming handsets? - and its already out (in the States anyway).

I also think that you raise an important point on consumer 'perception' of these phones - the iPhone (and increasingly Android) is a 'cool' phone to own - the average buyer of these phones would most probably turn their nose up at an MS or Nokia device at the moment. Another issue is that neither have a vibrant application base with which to develop their platforms. Apple and Android have a huge range of apps and an established network of 'evangelists' developing for them.

Both certainly have a long road ahead of them to catch up, interesting times ahead!

Nokia is, some would say, stuck with an operating system Symbian

Some might, but only if they hadn't noticed the noise Nokia's been making about Maemo/Meego and their partnership with Intel. Of course, people like that wouldn't be writing about the mobile market for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, would they?

Sometimes you realise that Nokia started out making wellingtons. Their stasis reminds me of Betamax v VHS. Whatever deficiencies Iphones have they do offer a great user experience. Symbian is never going to do that. For a really informed discussion check out Mobile Industry Review.They recently highlighted the number of pro Nokia blogs that have just given up. Bit like Nokia management, really!

Nokia's sell phones. It's what they do and they do it better than anyone else. Milanesi is also wrong - they don't have to do it better, in fact they don't have to even do it as well, just well enough. Surprised you don't mention MeeGo though, Rory.

As for the iPhone, it's becoming increasingly tedious not unlike a considerable number of its owners. Cool in 2009, boring today.

This article seems to completely forget that Apple and Google were the ones who initially had a mammoth catching-up task. Clearly all of these companies are at completely different stages with their smartphone operating systems - as Windows Mobile shows, something that was state-of-the-art a decade ago ends up struggling to compete, eventually, as unpredictable hardware developments force operating systems to be shoehorned into phones that they would ideally need a fundamental redesign to get the most out of. It's highly likely that iOS and Android will need a major refresh a significant amount of time before Windows Phone 7 does.

"One figure really tells the story. Last quarter, the average selling price of its smartphones was 143 euros (£120), which was 21% lower than a year ago. By contrast, Apple's average selling price for the iPhone - in other words, what it gets from the operators - was reported in its recent results as $595 (£389). No wonder Steve Jobs was celebrating more record profits this week."
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This probably means that because the iPhone is in such demand the buyer pays twice the proper price. Profits profit profits..... and then the Apple users think Steve is their friend!

What would worry me if I was an investor in Nokia is their failure to diversify. The ngage died a death and they've never sorted their mp3 software . They were in the markets ages ago and did nothing with it. Now the computer manufacture's have the lead as they've made using a phone a secondary function. Not just apple, RIM have shown that data is the way forwards and that is the way forwards still. Nokia, if they don't go the way of Erickson, must innovate - but in what is the billion dollar question.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

It saddens me that the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ has started to advertise. I would have loved them to be impartial, so I can get the whole story. They report on everything Apple does, the good and the bad, but they always make sure to have an article up that has a heading that have the word Iphone in it. It is hard to find one with the words HTC, Nokia or anything else in it. and when they do mention these companies it is to report how poorly they are doing in relation to Apple. No wonder Apple is winning the "mindshare", they are all we ever hear of.

Interesting article, but I have to agree with Rassie. The almost daily i-phone propoganda on the i-blogs of the i-³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ is becoming embarrassing. I know there is a lot more happening in the world of mobile phones and mobile communications - I would love to be able to read about some of it on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ. Can I humbly request that you broaden your coverage a little bit?

This is an article about Nokia and the difficulties they have on becoming the market leader once again and how can you write an article like this without mentioning Apple and the sheer power they have? Actively not mentioning Apple while mentioning all other companies because people are tired of hearing about them wouldnt exactly be impartial would it?

However, i can't argue against the main tech page being inundated with Apple, Google or Facebook...i just dont think its fair to attack Rory on this article in itself...

When I last looked at upgrading my phone I noticed a lot of the Iphones were on 24 month contracts where the Nokia's were on 12 month.

So if people upgrade their nokia's twice as often but nokia make half as much money on it don't they all come out equal at the end of time?

I find all this talk of different kinds of smartphones and their various kinds of software pretty irrelevant.

I'm not even going to consider spending my hard-earned cash on a smartphone until the mobile phone companies can get their coverage sorted out. Whenever I've asked friends with whizzy smartphones to demonstrate something whizzy that requires internet access, as often as not they have completely failed to do so because of a connectivity failure.

When that is sorted out, I might start to think about which particular brand of smartphone I'd like. But not before.

My advice to MS and Nokia is that the "mindshare" wars should start on the media, not on consumers. Most consumers want something functional and cool, which all major manufacturers can do. However, when the media throw in their skewed analyses, it skews the market in favour of those media friendly manufacturers.

Not many people actually buy their phones from Nokia. They buy them from a network provider (eg Vodafone) or a retail outlet (Carphone warehouse). These companies don't pay Nokia the £200 you pay. They've bought in bulk and will make more in contracts. Nokia make profit by producing phones cheaper or like Apple sell at higher prices for more features.

The N8 will have to pull a major rabbit out of the hat with Simbian 3 to turn customer opinion. A silly need when they could have taken open source Android!- But that is why they are in trouble :(

Developers, developers, developers!

It's about what I can do with my phone. If the apps are available then I think Microsoft won't be entirely left out in the cold.

The tools, which you can downloaded for free, are well established as is the development language [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]

The strengths of the platform will be the familiar toolset, language(s) and the large volume of developers who can switch from desktop to phone coding with very little additional knowledge. If anything, you need less knowledge as the API is a cut down version of the full desktop API for Silverlight (GUI development) and XNA (game development).

Where MS let themselves down are on the obvious things like copy and paste and multi-tasking. Seriously, no copy and paste when you're trying to edit a Word document must be someones idea of a joke.

#14. DisgustedOfMitcham2 wrote:

"Whenever I've asked friends with whizzy smartphones to demonstrate something whizzy that requires internet access, as often as not they have completely failed to do so because of a connectivity failure. When that is sorted out..."

So that is never then!

Smartphones have one use to me that is useful and additional to that of a phone and that is the ability to accurately hold and update a diary. Unless they do this faultlessly I am not interested. This integration has to be with my main PC and not some nebulous cloud diary as I never even intend to entrust my personal data to anyone or any piece of equipment that I do not personally control or can be certain that is backed up properly. (The contact list needs to be similarly robustly integrated and maintained.)

There is nothing else that I would need or trust a smartphone to do.

Facebook is a no no as the company is operated in a country without proper data protection legislation.

The only way I would trust a smartphone to do anything else is to work as part of a robust and secure vpn (virtual private network) with my home and office server, but the connectivity issue is a disastrous bottleneck. There is absolutely no way I would ever entrust my data to the cloud.

The way ahead is to have personal servers in a secure location at home/in your business connected to your mobile phone via a vpn. (A vpn requires a proper log in and security certificate and full encryption.) Business users insist on this and so should domestic users.

The lack of coverage makes GPS mapping systems rather a pointless add-on in my view. The screen is far too small to watch the telly, but is big enough to read a book/view a multimedia document - but I would store the downloaded book on my home server for security. ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ banking might be nice but should be via the home server for security and not direct to the bank as is any form of purchasing of anything.

We shouldn't confuse whether we're looking at things from a company or consumer point of view. Yes, Apple can make more money because they're selling fewer devices with a high profit margin, which from the point of view of Nokia's profit margin, is of concern to them. But for us consumers? Nokia are still number one. Yes, to some degree media coverage should focus on how profitable companies are doing, but equally, there should be coverage from the consumer point of view. To put things in perspective, IIRC Nokia still sell more phones a quarter than Apple have ever sold (by a factor of two, in fact).

Apple make plenty of money from Macs, but no one would suggest that Macs therefore had more "mindshare" or whatever. Windows is still by far the dominant desktop OS.

That Nokia's smartphones are now cheaper may be bad for Nokia, but it's good for consumers. (With computers, that Macs are expensive is a common criticism; I find it odd that with phones, this is claimed as a good point for Iphones!)

"make a comeback"? But they're still number one.

"it has won the battle for hearts and minds: it's talked about; it has an aura around it; it's the kind of phone that many are happy to wave under their friends' noses"

It's true that Iphone users are more likely to wave it under their friends' noses (or even complete strangers - I once had someone in a pub butt into our coversation about Android, to brag how they had Iphones) , but that's no different to the "Get a Mac" claims that the one Mac user will always make. It doesn't mean that anyone else cares. The rest of us are happy with our phones, we just don't brag about it all the time. Trying to claim that the Iphone has "won the battle" or "has an aura" is just subjective ill-defined claims. This is not journalism - one can't judge popularity from what phones your mates spend their time bragging about or bashing.

But if we are going to judge "mindshare" by such anecdotal evidence, then take a look at the comments this and other blog entries regularly get: seems to me there's plenty of mindshare with Nokia, and people are just fed up with the assertions from the media that we should only care about the Iphone.

If by "mindshare" we mean it's what the media hype about, I agree. For which the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ is much to blame. Part of this is due to the fact that Nokia have little presence in the US, and the US media, and US Internet users, heavily dominate. But there's no excuse for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ. This is circular-reporting: the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ hypes nothing but the Iphone, and now we have articles meta-reporting about how the Iphone has so much "mindshare"! I wonder why? I have to agree with Rassie and JonnyBoy74 - if people end up only thinking of the Iphone, it's because of the overwhelming media coverage. Note that this covearge of the Iphone and Ipad came *before* those products were released (or even officially announced). So this isn't simply the media responding to what consumers think about, it's the other way round.

It's odd to mention RIM and Android - actually, I'd say RIM are in the same boat as Nokia, in that they also have much higher share than Apple, but they get far less coverage. Android also get far less coverage, although they get an occasional mention (usually just to make the Iphones look better - the trick of making it look like you're considering other phones, but only including the ones that are less popular, to make the Iphone look popular).

"Nokia is, some would say, stuck with an operating system Symbian which has so far proved unattractive to many users."

Proven itself so unattractive that it's still by far the most popular? Nokia also have Meego for future high end phones.

But what I'd really like to complain about is the recent news of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ producing Iphone and Ipad apps. When the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ produced Iplayer being Windows only, people (rightly) complained, and the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ gave in. So why is it different for Apple? And at least Windows was the most used OS on the desktop, where as the Iphones have a mere few per cent market share. Where's my Symbian app? Similarly for all those with Blackberries and so on.

And if the Ipad is being included, what about netbooks and laptops? Nevermind Windows Mobile - there are far more netbooks and laptops out there running straightforward Windows than there are Ipads (probably this is true for Linux too)...

MrBontana: "in my opinion they are being left in the dust by the iPhone4 and Android devices that are light years ahead"

In my opinion they aren't. Whilst Nokia don't have anything at the very high end like the HTC Desire, for those who don't need a 1GHz processor and don't wish to spend £400 on a phone, there's a great deal of choice offered by Nokia. And judging by sales, more people agree with me than with you. Hardly arrogance.

(And I wouldn't count the IPhone as high end in the way that the HTC Desire is - it's continually playing catch-up. Did you finally get multitasking?)

I think Android is fine, but I tire of this constant Nokia-bashing, not to mention people who uphold the Iphones as the best phones ever. Why not accept that different people have different needs, preferences and viewpoints? The only arrogance here is that people do this, when Nokia are actually the most popular.

"average buyer of these phones would most probably turn their nose up at an MS or Nokia device at the moment. "

And the same is true in reverse. As for "cool" - well, the Iphones are the expensive designer labels of the technology world. The users brag about having spent ten times as much on a logo, but the rest of us don't care.

As for apps, it's hard to count the number, as you're not restricted to a single app store.

leivtunc: On VHS vs Betamax. Well, if you're saying that Iphones are better, then that would make them the Betamax. Where as Nokia phones being cheaper fits with VHS. Who won? And indeed, Nokia are winning.

MyVoiceinYrHead: "The N8 will have to pull a major rabbit out of the hat with Simbian 3 to turn customer opinion. A silly need when they could have taken open source Android!- But that is why they are in trouble "

A fair point, if they could use Android for free. Although it also means they lose their competitive distinction, and people have no reason to choose them over HTC or Motorola. Whilst some people like Android, I've yet to see any good argument how it's better in every respect, and there are still good things about Symbian like Nokia maps which works offline, or the decent battery life. A bigger issue for them losing at the high end may be the hardware - you can't get a Nokia phone with specs like a HTC Desire. It might help their image at the high end to simply have a very powerful "flagship" phone, even if most sales are still at the mid range.

Also that they have to keep developing Symbian anyway (otherwise they have nothing to run on all their mid-range phones), so this isn't an extra cost. If it comes to the worst, they always have the choice to switch to Android in future - having Android for the high end, and Symbian for the mid-range could work. But it looks like they're planning on Meego for a possible replacement OS at the high end.

Nice article. Nokia has put a lot of money and time into making the symbian^3 platform open source. The idea of making it open source was already in the pipeline well before Android was released. ITs just that android were quicker in doing so. So the only thing that it lacks against other smartphones at the moment is apps. (I know it can run old software but who wants that when new smartphones have accelerometers and hd playback etc..).

As the nokia N8 phone is highend and at a low price it should be able to compete with other smart phones. IOS4 and Andoid and blackberry. I have yet to see the smoothness of symbain^3 it does have pinch to zoom. HDMI out and can play divx files out of the box. THe N8 also supports a USB connection so you can connect an external usb key or harddrive to transfer (apps,music,videos etc....)
It also does have the largest sensor that a camera phone has ever had also a xenon flash. Once everyone jumps on the bandwagon of the N8 the apps will come to.....

The downfall for Nokia are themselves announcing symbian^4 to early, who wants to buy a symbian^3 phone when in 6 months time its out of date as symbian^4 will be released.

If Nokia wanted to compete with google apple and RIM then they need to have a statement from the CEO that they are committed to the Nokia N8 by allowing a software upgrade to symbian^4 just like Apple commited to an upgrade to IOS4 and Android will be able to upgrade to Froyo.

If they dont commit to this then I am afraid that this phone will fail before it starts. They have got the price and the hardware right, and maybe the symbian^3 software will be fast and fluid but if its software is out of date and not upgradeable noone will be buying them in 2 months time.

"Most consumers want something functional and cool, which all major manufacturers can do."

And affordable. Which is why Nokia sell three tiems more smartphones than Apple.

"Not many people actually buy their phones from Nokia. They buy them from a network provider (eg Vodafone) or a retail outlet (Carphone warehouse)."

"A silly need when they could have taken open source Android!"

Err... no. What woud be silly is becoming Google's vassal. Incidentally Symbian is also open source.

Err... that's pretty much the same with every smartphone.

Rory Cellan-Jones.

"..I think he meant that even though the iPhone is bought by far fewer consumers than those who purchase Nokia phones, it has won the battle for hearts and minds: it's talked about; it has an aura around it.."

yes, "".

I have never liked the restrictions imposed on iPhone users by Apple. Many aspects of the phone are controlled in some way, and the entry level for Developers is quite high, at $99 per year for basic deployment to phone and publish to store access, whereas Google's own Android Market asks for a one-off $25 fee to obtain Publisher access on the Market - apps can be compiled and installed to any Android phone without this fee.

I think it's safe to say that Nokia dominate the non-smartphone and non touch-screen handset markets, which is where Symbian OS holds its majority market share, but as more consumers make the transition to smartphones, they see only a small number of options. iPhone, Android or RIM-Blackberry. Palm and their phones on Palm OS seem to feel rather neglected in the current smartphone market.

Nokia have been quite stubborn when it comes to their own handsets. They have been insistent on using Symbian OS, their own invention, on practically every handset that comes out of their factory. Aside from the Nokia loyalists, the name "Symbian OS" doesn't really turn heads or attract quite the attention that iOS and Android does, clearly showing the lack of demand; in Nokia's desperation to increase the Symbian market share, eventually agreed to open-source it, and yet, adoption by other handset makers is slim, with only Sony Ericsson and Samsung taking a slight interest.

In my opinion, the OHA (Open Handset Alliance) - and it's flagship product, Android OS, is a fantastic thing to have happened. It allows all the various handset manufacturers (LG, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung etc.) to focus on designing attractive hardware and being more competitive in this way, without having to worry so much about compatibility with installing apps, intercommunication between different handsets and devices, or having to worry about *yet another* applications market for each and every different make of handset. Android gives these manufacturers a chance to "compete" against the iPhone, which appears to have dominated much of the smartphone market, with phones that look the same and do the same.

You could say I'm very opinionated, and quite biased, but I'm all for a universal, open source operating system and similar UI that doesn't have 50-dozen patents threatening to sue anyone that wants to do a similar thing, a pathetic/selfish move that Apple pulled on common-sense features such as multi-touch gesturing and slide to unlock.

I think personally that most people are fairly blinkered when it comes to technology anyway. In order to compete, you have to spew the most on-the-edge lies. That's all.

I've heard plenty of people say things like "Nokia don't have the high-end market" - by which they mean drastically-over-the-top technical specifications. Like a 1Ghz CPU in a cellphone. Why is that necessary? It just costs battery life, and doesn't give any real benefit that I can see. My N97 - a much maligned model - opens, closes, and installs apps at a perfectly smooth, acceptable speed. Why should I care if someone else has a phone that can do that in 20ms less time? How exactly does that impact?

It doesn't, at all.

And the most bitter complaint from all those "high-end" smartphone users?

"Battery life is poor."

What about some numbers? In this article, , the journalist compares the total number of Android handset activations with the number of iPhone 4 handsets sold in the first 23 days of sales of the iPhone 4. Q: Guess which has a higher daily average over that period? A: Android (160,000 a day compared to the iPhone 4 average of 130,000 a day)

I find this VERY newsworthy.

Unlike Rory, i am not an Apple fan boy. I am a realist. Having said that, i think it might be too little to late for Microsoft. I currently own a HTC touch 2 which uses the latest Win mobile OS but i find it slow and boring. Know if we could upgrade to Win 7 without buying a new phone, then i will take it for a test drive. But that won't happen so i will be moving unto an Android on any phone. I used to use Symbian in the early days but i lost faith after they died and know seem to have resurrected

At 1:39pm on 23 Jul 2010, John_from_Hendon wrote:

'Smartphones have one use to me that is useful and additional to that of a phone and that is the ability to accurately hold and update a diary. Unless they do this faultlessly I am not interested. This integration has to be with my main PC and not some nebulous cloud diary as I never even intend to entrust my personal data to anyone or any piece of equipment that I do not personally control or can be certain that is backed up properly. (The contact list needs to be similarly robustly integrated and maintained.)'

'There is absolutely no way I would ever entrust my data to the cloud.'

I feel the need to remark on these points because I see them as invalid.

1) Unless you wrote the calendar/diary software on your computer and wrote the software that syncs them AND wrote the operating system, you are not in control. You're trusting your data to software that could, theoretically, go wrong at any moment. Even backups can go bad(all hard drives die eventually, for example)

2) You have an email account, no?
Do you use search engines? Then you're already entrusting data to the cloud, like it or not. Your email is stored on a server somewhere that you do not control and, even if you designed your own email system and control the incoming connection, your data is still leaving your server every time you send an email.
Search engines record every search you make in order to offer search suggestions. Whilst strictly-speaking that isn't personal data, it is your data.

The reality is that the cloud is essentially just a lot of servers with a lot of storage, bandwidth and processing power. You use it every day without even thinking about it and these companies(such as Google) who operate the biggest cloud applications(Gmail, including contact storage, for example) are trusted with that data. If they have breaches and people stop trusting them, there goes their business. In other words, if your data wasn't secure, they wouldn't continue to exist.

Anyway, to my main point.
Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 OS does look good. It's likely not too late for them, as much as I'd love for it to be (I'm a huge Google fanboy)
I personally think that Nokia would do well to switch over to Android and focus on making good hardware.
In the medium-term(say 5 years from now) Apple's market share will decline because they only offer one phone. It's looking very much like a repeat of Windows versus Mac, with Android taking on the role of Microsoft. They will ultimately likely have a much smaller market share than Android, but will continue to make a lot of money because they charge a premium for their devices. The same will eventually happen in the tablet market.

'slightly less locked down' is still locked down in my book. I'm currently writing this on my N900 - a Linux powered phone that is about as open as they come. it's not (yet) for everybody, but it's pretty good and it's nice to be able to run firefox on a mobile phone.

Of course, if I want to I can always install the latest version of Android that we've gotten ahead of most other Android users...

Let us be serious - Nokia is at serious risk of failing in the Smartphone space. The reason for this is a complete failure to deliver software and products customers want and need.

Steps that need to be taken are:

+ Make Ovi work - it cannot be logical to have to download European maps country by country
+ Make Ovi open to encourage wider use
+ On the hardware start providing dual sim cards as an option on all handsets - works for business and personal as well as those who commute cross border.

Unless Nokia can get with the program and reduce development time on handsets they will become the Wordstar of the Mobile phone age - everyone once had and used a Nokia - now no one does.

The "mindshare" that Microsoft have in this market, especially with those who need to sell its products on, is, increasingly, a nagging sense of impending dread at what might go wrong next. The buzz around WinMo 7 (or whatever they are calling it, this week) is largely positive, but the example of the collapse of the KIN phone handset, last month (launched to market, and then withdrawn weeks later, amidst rumours of almost laughable sales) was ominous; not because of the technologies, but because the leaders responsible for this catastrophe are the same as will lead the Windows Mobile charge.

It is this leadership - and its almost mythical inability to grasp what might be an attractive product, as compared to a hopeless dog - which makes an increasingly large portion of the Microsoft workforce despair. It doesn't matter how clever you are, or how good your technology is, if your employer insists on trying to sell it in a form factor that has a one hour battery life, a tiny resistive screen, or a metallic brown case.

Many partners in Microsoft's channel are developing something of a nervous tick, about whatever Microsoft's next mobile product is going to be. "Clean and simple interface" is what we keep hearing about Windows Phone - but let's face it, it looks dangerously like yet another square, boxy, vomit-green-and-baby-blue attempt, at being bright and cheerful, in a product that Microsoft has, thus far, had a singular talent for making cheap and dreary.

And the problem that the KIN demonstrated, was that many of the leaders within Microsoft, who will call these shots, possess the aesthetic sensibilities of a goldfish.

I don't have high hopes for Windows Phone 7, assuming the reasons people give for writing off the iPhone are true (rather than the increasingly common anti-Apple snobbery). Applications from a single controlled source, no copy-paste, no flash (at least at outset and only vague talk of adding it later). All features of the upcoming WM7, and all reasons why people confidently predicted the iPhone would fail, and why they wouldn't buy one.

With the added issue of less control over the hardware the OS will appear on, can Microsoft overcome these perceived problems?

Generally speaking though the more competition there is, the better for us all, as companies have to work harder to come up with even better products. For that reason let's hope Nokia and Microsoft do the business with their upcoming products.

Talking about market share etc - This has, literally, just happened at work and it has really puzzled me. My boss has an iPhone 3Gs - on a business contract with a well know phone company. It recently developed the 'White Screen of Death' problem and he spoke to the phone company who told him to speak to Apple, which he did and spoke to a nice American lady based in Cork. She told him to take it to the nearest Apple store (which he has just left to do) who would replace it - but as it's not supposed to be used for business purposes he shouldn't mention that it is his business phone. The implication being that if he did they would not be willing to help him as he had breached terms and conditions. So any talk of Market share has to be skewed by the fact that, unlike any other phone supplier that I am aware of, Apple has forbidden its use by anyone other than the personal sector.

Am I alone in thinking this is a bit strange?

:O)

Microsoft really getting their act together on anything - RIP
Nokia really getting their act together on Smart phones - RIP

What nobody seems to realise is that the game is already over!!

Apple Inc. have cornered the value end of the Smart Phone market with a 'powerhouse platform' called the iPhone, although nobody seems to have noticed that 'phoning' is but one of a stunning no. of capabilities possible with this 'app platform'. The iPhone evolves with each release and maintains user consistency, upgrading from one version of the iPhone to the next seamlessly. This is quite simply where Apple Inc. wins. Users in their masses will stick with the iPhone, quite happily evolving with it!

Then let's talk about the iPad. Same experience as the iPhone. A larger form factor 'powerhouse platform', same consistent interface, app store and user experience.

The only constraint on these Apple Inc. user devices (iPhone and iPad) is the rate at which the developer community can innovate through the apps.

The key to the smart phone battle has already been covered by others; it's the margin stupid that Apple Inc. makes from each handset made, reckoned to be approximately 60% on a price of around $599, across the globe.

Put the above mobility products, iPhone and iPad, together with the complete Apple Inc. ecosystem (iMacs, Macbooks, iOS, OSX, iTunes, App Store, iBooks) and you are witnessing the rebirth of the 'new computer age', which every day people are flocking too in their millions (recently announced that iOS now has more that 100 million users worldwide). Why you may ask? Because the human race is finally fed up with the technophobe complexity that Microsoft, Nokia et al and the Networks (in terms of phones) has forced on everyone over several decades, quite happy to keep pumping out rubbish that did not work as promised.

I think people focus on the wrong things here! IPhone is not popular because it's processor speed or memory look at the first iPhone it lacked features of a standard phone but people loved it because of how it LOOKS! I would not buy a nokia because they all look dull! They could make the best phone in the world but unless it looks good I'm not interested after all it's a phone and I need it to be a phone and Amy mice extras then fine! No phone comes close to the styling of the iPhone it's a beautiful piece of design so in my opinion nokia need new designers rather than trying to make better smartphones.

A Nokia Phone running Android would beat everything in the market today hands down. But I guess Nokia is too proud to dump Symbian, even when it is pulling them behind other phone makers in terms of innovations and features. I advise Nokia to look at Android and take back the market... not even Apple will see their backs once they do this.