Posted by Dan Farber

In the post I wrote about Rich Miner of Google saying that the Android mobile software stack will gain more users than the iPhone, several people commented. The general consensus is that Apple is the BMW of the personal computer industry and is the standard for innovation that its competitors, with far more market share, follow. Android is a non-factor.

The challenge for Apple is to keep coming up with proprietary products that fuel its business model, which is based on innovation and R&D around both hardware and software. Since Steve Jobs returned to Apple, the company has had a series of hit products that don’t dominate markets (with the exception of the iPod) but appeal to an elite and influential minority. Even Apple’s advertising makes the marketing from competitors look tedious and uninspired.

Apple’s tightly bound software and hardware provides unique differentiation in a world of mostly undifferentiated PCs and mobile devices. RIM’s Blackberry also has had success by controlling its entire product.

Microsoft has made progress with its Windows Vista operating system, and its OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) have created slicker PCs and laptops to run the software, but the Macintosh is still considered a superior product overall.

Jobs is clearly making the right choice for now not to license the Mac, iPhone, or iTunes software to hardware makers. Getting into a battle for OEMs with Microsoft, Google, Symbian, RIM, and Palm, etc. is a losing strategy at this juncture. The best mobile operating system and user experience doesn’t necessarily win the deals, even with Steve Jobs as the chief negotiator. Microsoft is extremely capable in working with OEMs and developers, which is a key factor in building out a platform.

On other hand, it would be interesting to see what developers could do if Apple open sourced the iPhone software. The mobile Web experience is the new center of attention and R&D spending in the tech industry. Google’s Android will be a good test case. If Android were to become successful, due to its openness and developer community, Apple would feel the heat. An army of smart developers with Google behind it could create a next-generation mobile Web operating system and application platform that challenges Apple far more than the current set of incumbents.

But Jobs is uniquely talented and a master of total product design. Handset manufacturers come up with dozens of phone designs per year, but haven’t been able to duplicate the user experience of the iPhone. You could say the Nokia N95, the HTC Touch, and other smartphones have similar capabilities, but they don’t match the slickness, pinching, and other capabilities of the Apple device despite its flaws (no 3G network and inaccessible battery, for example). The iPhone is also part of a family of personal devices that will become even more integrated.

Throwing open-source Android into the mix could give mobile device makers a better platform to take on the iPhone, but they will be mostly competing with each other for market share.

The iPhone will continue to be the BMW or Lexus of mobile devices, with modest share and lots of profit and envy from other mobile device makers. However, Apple could stumble, failing to keep up the rapid pace of innovation, but I wouldn’t count on it as long as Jobs is in the house.

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SAN FRANCISCO -(Dow Jones)- The iPhone Dev Team, a group of independent software developers, say they are close to unleashing a new product that undoes the tight control Apple Inc. (AAPL) plans to have over the flow of the software to its iPhone.

The developer team is working on a feature it’s calling Pwnage, which lets iPhones download and run other software programs that haven’t gone through any official, Apple-controlled software distribution channels.

“You can do things like installing custom-made files, straight from (Apple’s) iTunes,” according to comments attributed to one of the iPhone Dev Team’s developers, who goes by the name MuscleNerd, posted on the team’s Web site, iphone-dev.org. “The tools are undergoing intensive developing and soon will be ready for public consumption.”

Pwnage is the latest example of how disruptive software developers have been to Apple’s best-laid plans for its iPhone, a key product for Apple. Once distributed, the Pwnage feature means Apple may no longer be able to count on taking a 30% share of every iPhone software program sold, as it said it would.

Meanwhile, the Pwnage software also weakens the steps Apple is taking to rein in a developer community regarding iPhone software sales, which are expected to blossom into hundreds of millions of dollars, if not $1 billion a year, in annual sales.

As outlined by Apple about 10 days ago, starting sometime in June Apple plans to begin distributing iPhone software made by outside developers. But it first will inspect iPhone software programs from third parties, then distribute them either through Apple’s iTunes Web store, or directly to the phone via an Apple- controlled “Apps Store.”

Meanwhile, Pwnage may also weigh on Apple’s plans to sell more iPhones to businesses, steps it announced two weeks ago when it said every iPhone will soon be able to access Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) Outlook email. But Apple also plans to make business software providers like SAP AG (SAP) or Oracle Corp. (ORCL) distribute their iPhone software through official Apple channels, a move that rankled an industry not used to having to deal with an intermediary. It remains to be seen, though, if enterprises would see the new Pwnage software as a decent workaround to the issue.

An Apple spokeswoman did not comment for this story, citing company policy not to talk about products in development at other companies. A representative for iPhone Dev Team, which rarely grants interviews, did not return several emails seeking comment.

The iPhone, a combination phone and digital media player with a touch-screen interface, was introduced last June, and has since become Apple’s fastest selling device. As of two weeks ago, Apple was the No. 2 seller of smart phones, with a 28% share, behind No. 1-ranked Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM), the maker of the BlackBerry wireless email device and cell phone.

Shortly after the iPhone was released, Apple promised to open the iPhone so developers could create and distribute software programs for the device. From the start, Apple has allowed developers to create Web-based features for the iPhone to use.

But lots of developers didn’t wait for official channels. Within a few days of the iPhone’s release, they came up with their first substantial, market-changing development: software to unlock the iPhone so it will work on any GSM-based cellphone network, rather than just AT&T Inc.’s (T), which at the time was the only iPhone service provider.

Even though Apple wiped out those programs with an iPhone software update of its own, unlocking software still exists and its sales have thrived. Nearly 25% of all the iPhones sold, according to various estimates, are now unlocked, thus depriving Apple and its carrier partners the fees they would normally have collected from phone service revenue.

The popularity of the unlocking software is also putting more pressure on Apple to do away with its strategy of picking a single carrier per country to exclusively sell the device.

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By David Sims

TMCnet Contributing Editor

Opera Software (News - Alert), a vendor of Web browsing products, has announced that Ten by Orange has launched its unlimited mobile Internet service, Easy Web, powered by Opera Mini.

Using Opera’s compression technology to process and compress Web pages by up to 90 percent before sending them to mobile phones, the Easy Web service is billed as letting Ten by Orange customers access the full Web, surf sites, mobile blog and social network on the go. Easy Web, powered by Opera Mini, will be made available on the HTC (News - Alert) Touch, Samsung SGH-F330 and fifteen other handsets in France.

A subsidiary of the Orange Group, Ten by Orange develops offers and services designed to bring mobile Internet products to the French marketplace.

“By partnering with Opera, we are able to provide our customers with a true Web browser which is fast, robust and keeps our delivery costs under control,” said Thierry Coilhac, COO of Ten by Orange.

Opera Mini officials claim over 39 million cumulative users. The tailor-made Opera Mini product for Ten by Orange uses a customized home page with full brand integration of the User Interface, home page control including search, modification of menu items, pre-installation, bookmarks and more.

Bringing the desktop experience to mobile, Opera Mini’s Small Screen Rendering reformats the Web page to fit inside the screen width, eliminating the need for horizontal scrolling. Alternatively, a new “Desktop mode” gives users a wider view of the page.

Orange is the key brand of France Telecom (News - Alert). FT serves more than 170 million customers in five continents as of December 31, 2007, of which two thirds are Orange customers. The Group had consolidated sales of 52.9 billion euros in 2007. As of December 31, 2007, the Group had 109.6 million mobile customers and 11.6 million broadband internet (ADSL) customers.

Last week Oslo, Norway-based Opera made Google (News - Alert) the default search engine in Opera’s mobile Web browsers. Opera Mobile or Opera Mini users can access Google’s mobile search directly from the browser start page.

Because Opera Mini targets feature phones that have traditionally possessed limited browsing capabilities, company officials say, users choose to download and install Opera Mini to their phones. These consumers tend to use the mobile Web more frequently and actively than consumers with more static, less dynamic mobile Web browsers.

Every month, Opera Mini users browse more than 1.7 billion pages, with much of that traffic generated through the search function in the browser.

Google has been the default search option on Opera’s desktop browser for seven years. This new mobile collaboration covers all global territories except Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, and includes all of Opera’s standard mobile Web browsers.

Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera, said 2008 is “poised to be the year the mobile Web goes mainstream.” He noted that Opera Mobile has shipped on more than 100 million mobile phones so far, and that in 2007, more than 55 new phone models were launched with Opera Mobile pre-installed as the default Web browser.

Opera Mini is available completely free from http://www.operamini.com/. Opera Mobile is also available from http://www.opera.com/ in a free trial on select platforms. Google will appear as the default search engine for new and current users of Opera Mini as of March 1, 2008.

Earlier in February Opera Software announced the commercial release of Opera Mobile 9.5, its Web browser for phones.

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Microsoft has launched a bid to capture a segment of the growing market for rich web content on mobile phones.

The software firm has signed a deal with handset manufacturer Nokia to bring its Silverlight platform to millions of mobile phones.

Silverlight is seen as a competitor to Adobe’s Flash, which is already used by popular websites such as YouTube.

The software will first be available on Nokia’s high end smart phones running a Symbian operating system.

Flash phone

Nokia’s S60 platform, which uses Symbian, will be the first to take advantage of Silverlight.

S60 is used in handsets built by LG and Samsung as well as Nokia and is the most popular smart phone software platform with more than 53% market share.

It is used in Nokia’s latest N96 phone, the successor to its popular N95.

Other handsets and internet tablets running different software will follow at a later date, according to the firm.

Silverlight allows designers and developers to produce rich web applications that are independent of browser, operating system and handset.

Microsoft has stressed its value for developing Web 2.0 applications that would work on a computer, but also on any other device including mobile phones.

The software enters a marketplace already dominated by Adobe’s Flash, and its recently launched Air product.

Flash is already on millions of mobile phones.

Adobe has agreements with 18 of the top 20 device manufacturers worldwide including Nokia.

And, according to Adobe, 450 million devices have been shipped with the cut-down version of Flash, known as Flash Lite.

Microsoft will hope to compete with this presence.

The firm is currently working on a version of Sliverlight for its own Windows Mobile software.

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Posted by Will
We already know that Apple will be keeping a tight leash on third-party applications developed using its official iPhone SDK - Apple is the gatekeeper, inspector, judge, jury, and middle-man in this whole iPhone SDK distribution deal. That’s right, Apple will be taking cut of all commercial iPhone application revenue.

But, now we’re hearing that Apple will be taking a hands-off approach to free iPhone applications. Electronista’s sources are indicating that commercial (premium) iPhone applications and free iPhone apps will be held to different approval processes. Well, more specifically, Apple will subject premium iPhone applications to an as yet unknown approval process, while free software will be subjected to less (if any at all) scrutiny.

All iPhone applications, even free software, will still be distributed through iTunes - strengthening the Apple iTunes’ role as an all-in-one services portal for all Apple devices. And, requiring less regulatory red-tape for free iPhone applications should (if it turns out to be true) bolster iPhone development.

The question remains, how will Apple handle liability for these free applications? Without much oversight on Apple’s part, we imagine that Apple would want to distance itself from these free applications. It’s not too far-fetched to think that free iPhone apps will come with a disclaimer that absolves Apple of any liability or support should a free iPhone application crash, brick, or otherwise harm your iPhone.

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Apple has called a special event at its Cupertino headquarters next Thursday, 6th March, to discuss the current state of the iPhone and its future.

It’s widely believed that Apple will use this time to launch — or at least provide a decent information update — on the Software Development Kit (SDK). Steve Jobs had originally said that this software, which will allow third-party applications to natively (and officially) run on the iPhone, would be available this month. However, that date slipped.

Many believe that the iPhone should have been an open system from the start. It’s one of the main reasons (along with trying to break away from the exclusive network carriers) why so many iPhones have been hacked.

Whether that practice will stop when the SDK is released will probably depend upon how restrictive it is. If it’s only made available to selective developers, or it closes away too much of the internal workings of the iPhone, then the hacking may well continue.

Next week’s event may also be used to introduce more business-oriented applications for the iPhone, which could make it more attractive to business users, particularly with new tariffs introduced in the US, and similar ones expected in the UK this year.

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