Articulated Naturality Web

Articulated Naturality Web, or ANW, is what comes after augmented reality, the next level, the next phase if you will. There's a short video posted on engadget (and at the end of this blog post) that shows some of the features of ANW. For me, it's amazing because it fuses sensors, location, internet, image processing, and much more into one technology that gives meaning to the surroundings by means of your smartphone. Imagine sitting outside of an hotel, and looking at the available rooms, how they look inside, prices, and booking information. Blows my mind what we can achieve today with the amount of information and the technology available to us.

QPC - Articulated Naturality Web from Justin Montgomery on Vimeo.

Smartphone Market Share - Q1 2010

Smartphone Market Share for Q1 2010 (Source: The Nielsen Company):

BlackBerry in Top 5 of Worldwide Mobile Phone Bestsellers

As per wired.com, RIM has replaced Motorola in the top five mobile phone companies worldwide based on Q1 2010 sales, and it's tied with Sony Ericsson for the number 4 spot:

This is not unexpected since when it comes to enterprise and messaging, there is nothing like the BlackBerry. On a side note, Motorola has actually had profit for the first quarter of 2010, earning $69 millions. Go Moto!

Perfect Mobile Platform

What would make up the perfect mobile platform? What characteristics should it posses? Here are some of them, in no specific order:

• User Interface/Experience - a rich user interface that provides a great user experience. When using the phone, everything should come naturally, with ease, and should have the WOW factor that makes you never want to leave the phone out of your hands. Doing common tasks should not take more than a few clicks. 
• Application Ecosystem - Having many applications to chose from is not as important as having quality applications, those that satisfy a particular need, like finding a place to eat, checking your email, or playing Doom. Integrating location, social networking, and sensors is a must.
• Internet Browsing - surf the Web from anywhere, on the go. A mobile browser should be able to render pages properly and fast, navigation should be done with ease, data should be compressed as to save bandwidth, and use the latest web technologies (HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, etc).
• Battery Life - it better not leave me hanging after a full day of use, or in the middle of a call, or while searching for a place to eat using the GPS. 
• Development Ecosystem - provide a rich set of APIs that can access all the features of the phone, and can provide the best user experience. Provide tools that can be used to make it easier to write apps. Publishing an application should not involve much hassle. 
• Openness - here I refer to not only an open and free platform, but to a platform that allows any mobile technology to work on it.
• Enterprise - features such as security, integration with email/calendar/notes/contacts servers, messaging, to name just a few. 

There is no one platform that satisfies all these needs better than any other platform. What is needed is a platform that has the user experience of iPhone and Android, the application ecosystem of iPhone (and Android very soon), the internet browsing of iPhone and Android (mostly any WebKit-based browsers), the battery life of the Blackberry, the development ecosystem of Android and iPhone, the openness of Android, and the enterprise characteristics of Blackberry. 

Will we ever have such a platform? I really doubt it. 

Smartphone Application Downloads Forecast

ABI Research has recently published a forecast for smartphone application downloads world wide for 2009 - 2015, and which can bee seen in the chart below:

While iPhone apps are still going to be the leading source of downloads, for the year of 2010, Android is expected to have over 800 millions application downloaded, a major increase compared to 2009. Beside iPhone and Android, Blackberry and Symbian are also catching up on sales. What all this means, at least for me, is that it is a great time to be a mobile developer :)

Current and upcoming Android Phones

WiseAndroid has gathered a list of 50+ Android Phones that are currently on the market or will become available in the near future. TechCrunch provides images for (some of) the phones. Thank you for the effort!

Global smartphone market shares

From the data findings by analyst company Canalys, while Nokia and Microsoft shares are decreasing, RIM and Apple are growing:

The above stats are based on the number of units shipped during Q2 of 2009. The iPhone 3G was not yet out when the data was gathered. Android-based smartphones where not available in the second quarter of 2008. By this time next year, Android will be much closer to Microsoft's share. Nokia just came out with its Maemo-based smartphone, the N900. Moving more towards Maemo rather than hanging on to Symbian might actually work out pretty well for Nokia in the end.

Top 5 smartphones for Q1 2009

I was writing in one of my may posts about top most popular handsets in the U.S. at the end of 2008, new data come out (I read about it via cenriqueortiz) regarding top 5 smartphones sold in Q1 of 2009:

1. BlackBerry Curve
2. Apple iPhone 3G
3. BlackBerry Storm
4. BlackBerry Pearl
5. T-Mobile G1

Am glad to see the G1 up there. By the end of 2009, I predict it will move up to 4th or 3rd place.

Top 10 most popular U.S. handsets in December 2008

RCRWireless has published a while ago the top 10 most popular U.S. devices in December of 2008. Blackberry Bold and Blackberry Storm (which was released in November) came in at no. 6 and 3, while the iPhone still remains no. 2, but I assume these numbers are limited because of the single-carrier barrier. Topping the list was the Blackberry Curve.

Smartphone sales numbers

According to a Gartner report, smartphones sales grow by almost 14% compared to 2007. What is encouraging are the news regarding Android-based smartphones:

"Sales of Linux-based smartphones were up by 19 per cent year-over-year, mainly through Android-based smartphones being available through T-Mobile during the fourth quarter of 2008."

I expect this number to grow with upcoming Android-based smartphone models.