thoughts on computing

htc vs. iphone

I saw a little note yesterday and found it rather curious – despite having some nearly infitisimal percentage of mobile devices, 0.09% of all web pages viewed in November were viewed on iPhones.

By way of contrast, all Windows Mobile devices added together account for only 0.06% of web page views in November. Palm OS accounts for about 0.02%. In fact, the iPhone passes those two combined.

There’s more coverage today. Ben Worthen at the WSJ has some thoughts here, and Erica Sadun at TUAW proposes a conclusion from this:

* Viewing the Web on most mobile devices stinks.

* Viewing the Web on the iPhone doesn’t stink.

* Most people still use computers to view the web.

My Own Experience
On a personal note, after 8 years of using various palm os devices, including Treos since the 180, irretrievably misplacing my latest gave me a chance to rethink things with somewhat less guilt. After a couple of days with an iphone side-by-side with a treo 755p, I returned said treo and haven’t looked back.

The use case that convinced me? Reading blogs and keeping up with rss feeds.

Stuff like not-crashing-while-I’m-on-the-phone (an unfortunate little palm os habit these days) was also helpful, and the gratuitous eye-candy was, well, gratuitously enjoyable, but in the end blogs and other feeds made the best case. Even made up for the well-know warts, helped by wifi taking the sting out of the soviet-era at&t data network.

htc omni

Mobile Innovation … Finally
I remember just about a year or two ago bemoaning with friends how the mobile device market seemed to have reached some sort of impasse, or maybe just all of the current players had gotten tired of trying.

Things could hardly be more different today. Microsoft released WM6, handset makers (notably HTC, Samsung, and others) are innovating like crazy, Apple brought out the first part of the iphone (I think the SDK and 3G will complete V1 of the product), and now Google’s Android is floating around like a big, fat thought bubble without anyone to speak it … in the proverbial fortnight there are lots of crazy things happening, with much more on the way.

This is why I LOVE competition!