http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/13/samsung-s8500-wave-caught-in-a-spigot-of-leaks/

D

There are always going to be two groups of people for any market. Those that don’t really care to lean much about the details, and those who belong to that product’s fan page on Facebook. You seem to have a ‘backingin.com-level’ annoyance :-) with cell phones. I love it all. Conversely, I don’t care to understand the digital camera market, so I contacted you on which one to buy. To me, the entire camera market is one giant acronym. Same with flat-screen TVs.

Apple isn’t the winner (yet). BlackBerry still has about double their market share. There is already a ‘smart-geek’ faction, and it is Android. Microsoft does have huge image problems, but they are MOSTLY just image problems. Ask anybody about Windows Vista, and they’ll tell you it sucks. Then ask them why it sucks…if they have ANY answer for that then ask them to back up their claims in any way… MS has come a long way and has some very cool technology (lots of a back office stuff and web stuff), but they do have a very bad public image. I guess that’s why they sell Xbox, Bing, and Zune and not Microsoft Game Console, Winnows Live Search, and Microsoft MP3 Player. They are sticking with the Windows Phone moniker for their current and upcoming Windows Mobile phones, but that might be a mistake.

Bottom line. People choose to spend their money on different things. I laugh at those who buy designer handbags for gobs of cash or the stereophile who spend a king’s ransom on turntable, but they wouldn’t understand why I spend my money the way I do. In any event, I will mostly likely continue to blog about geeky technology like smartphones and search engines.

:-) Oh, and the 3.5mm jack is a big deal. You can plug in your headphones into a 3.5mm jack. Most phones used to come only with a mono 2.5mm jack that worked with hands-free headsets. I personally wish the Droid had the older 2.5mm. You can only use Bluetooth headsets with Droid, and I prefer to plug in my headset (better sound and quicker to setup when I get into the car). :-)

I just think the smartphone category has too many variables in it for the consumer to make a truly well-informed decision. After the iPhone, which is a winner because of it’s design, relatively simple product geography (Apple makes the hardware, the OS and the Apps, AT&T is the carrier) and cool factor (more on that later) whereas after that, Blackberry aside, you get into very complex geographies. As a consumer you need to weigh on phone model, OS, and carrier independently. If you really want the Palm Pre, great! And you want it on Verizon, ohh sorry. You can only get Sprint with that model. You can get the Palm Pre Plus, though! That is carried on Verizon. Huh? Two versions of the same phone on two different, exclusive carriers?

While people bitched that the iPhone was only carried on AT&T, you got to give AAPL credit for keeping it simple. Rigid, but simple. It shifted the customer focus from carrier to hardware. The customer would sign any contract just to get the hardware.

Don’t even get me started on T-Mobile. Go to http://www.t-mobile.com and you’ll see “T-Mobile myTouch 3g. Now with a 3.5mm jack.” NO WAY?!! I gotta get me one of those!! A 3.5mm jack? Woo-hoooo! It’s like buying a car because of the double-wishbone suspension.

People also buy things for status. We like whipping out an iPhone because we like to project an image that we’re in-the-know, up-to-date. I don’t, but that’s just me. I stopped using my Palm Pilot just last year. Apple was the first to make the cell phone sexy and, therefore, has the hammer lock on the cool factor. Blackberry sends the message that you’re a business person, serious and practical. Beyond that? Not sure. The Droid, Palm Pre and the others are just seen as also-rans. Absent of any status, good or bad. This will not move product. Until these also-rans establish themselves as a market niche, they will continue to struggle.

One image that is still in the air is the smart-geek. If Palm or Google can establish street cred with the Cnet/Wired crowd, they can leverage that image in the more open user market as “Hey dummy, these guys know their tech and they choose Google Nexus. Why haven’t you?” That will help. But until they simplify their geography, the public will still shout a collective “meh.”

Truth is, I don’t know who the winner will be. I know that AAPL is currently the winner, but that could change. If Cupertino doesn’t do something about the Flash problem, they could lead to real problems. I say this only because the general public is beginning to notice. But the market is so fluid and dynamic that we can only take a snapshot in this time and place, look at it, study it, make conclusions, then throw them away because the variables have changed.

Maybe I’ll get a Jitterbug.

Speaking as a dumb person I am completely befuddled by the differences in the Palm Pre (the iPhone killer, not), the Pixi, the Android, the Nexus, the Behold, the Droid all of them. And that’s just in the past year or so. Go to CNET and do a search for smartphone reviews. 48 pages yielding over 480 reviews. How am I supposed to process all this information? Doesn’t really matter as new phones will come out in six months that will render these others DOA.

As Obama said, “Enough!”

I don’t need a phone smarter than me.

I don’t need to be running Powerpoint on my phone.

I don’t need to watch TV on my phone.

I need a phone that won’t drop my call in the middle of a conversation with a client.

I need a phone with a battery that will last a week.

I need a phone that can fall to the ground and survive.

I need a phone that works for me. Not I for it.

Google is losing this race because it assumes people care about the same things Google cares about.

idon’t.