iPhone in "striking distance" of BlackBerry
Apple gains, RIM drifts, Palm holds steady in the latest ChangeWave survey
Source: ChangeWave
Research in Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry, with a 40% share, is still the most popular smartphone among the 4,255 owners who responded to a ChangeWave survey in September. But Apple's (AAPL) iPhone is gaining fast, according to research director Paul Carton.
"Apple (30%) has seen a huge market share jump since the previous survey," he writes in a release issued Tuesday. "Not only has the iPhone 3GS release enabled them to gain 5-pts overall — for the first time it has also placed them within striking distance of the number one spot in the consumer market."
Palm (PALM) remains far behind at 7%, Carton notes, but adds that "this is the first survey in nearly two years where their share hasn’t fallen – and that’s a clearly encouraging sign."
ChangeWave surveys are often dismissed as unrepresentative — which they are. But in this case, the so-called ChangeWave Alliances' 20,000 professionals "who spend their everyday lives on the frontline of technological change," according to its website, represent the sweet spot of RIM's and Palm's target market.
For more results — good and bad — from the survey, see the charts below the fold.
Palm’s Next Act: Pixi
Palm Pixi
The clearest indication at whom Palm is aiming its newest smartphone, dubbed Pixi, is the new Facebook application that debuts in the younger, smaller sibling to the Palm Pre. If that is your thing, then perhaps your gadget has arrived.
At a meeting in San Francisco Tuesday afternoon, Palm chairman and CEO Jon Rubinstein kept the Pixi half hidden in the black and orange slipcover that comes with the Pre. The top half of Pixi looks a lot like its older sibling, but when Rubinstein performed the full monty as it were, the device revealed itself as a candy bar-type phone that echoes the Pre’s styling without the slide-out keyboard.
Matte black, with the same sticky keys as the Pre, the Pixi is noticeably thinner and a tad smaller than Pre. Slick was my first impression, and still is. When I put my Blackberry Bold down on the table, it looked chunky by comparison. Rubinstein didn’t noticeably gloat, but pointed out that Pixi is more than 10% thinner than Apple’s iPhone 3GS, and 20% more svelte than any Blackberry device (there is a reason that Pixi is launching at New York’s Fashion Week after all). More
Steve Jobs to Ed Colligan: Dear sir, let's collude
Jon Rubinstein. Photo: Palm, Inc.
"We must do whatever we can to stop this."
That's how Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs is reported to have asked then Palm (PALM) CEO Ed Colligan to enter into a possibly illegal agreement to stop trying to hire away each others' top engineering talent.
If accurate, it may be one of the most stilted attempts to collude ever recorded.
Colligan's answer, according to Bloomberg's Connie Guglielmo, who says she has reviewed the two-year-old communications:
"Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other’s employees, regardless of the individual’s desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal."
Is this really how conspirators talk?
Apparently so in Silicon Valley, where hiring practices long overlooked have come under increased scrutiny by the Obama administration.
Return rates: Palm Pre 11%. Apple iPhone 3GS 7%.
iPhone and Pre. Photos: Apple, Palm
How often does the Palm (PALM) Pre break down and have to be returned and exchanged for a new one?
That question came up a few weeks after the Pre's June 6 launch when Jesup and Lamont analyst Kevin Dede, citing a decidedly unscientific online survey, reported that the Pre's return rate was a shocking 40%.
Pre Central, the site that conducted the poll, promptly disputed its own results. It ran a second, larger survey and got a slightly more comforting return rate: 18%.
A few days later, RBC Capital's Mike Abramsky weighed in, estimating the actual return rate to be 2% – 3%, a figure he arrived at by throwing out from his estimate of the total return rate (8% to 15%) any units that were exchanged for new ones.
Now ChangeWave Research has released its own estimate, and while hardly definitive given the sample size, it at least provides some context.
Based on a survey of 198 Apple (AAPL) iPhone 3GS owners and 38 Pre owners, it found that the exchange rate of the Pre (11%) does indeed appear to be higher than the iPhone (7%), but not by much.
iPhone vs. Pre: Satisfaction bakeoff
Source: RBC/ChangeWave
Palm Pre owners love their smartphones, but not as much as owners of Apple's new 3GS iPhone love theirs.
In a survey of 200 3GS users conducted Aug. 4-11 by RBC Capital and ChangeWave Research, 99% pronounced themselves satisfied, of which 82% were "very satisfied."
In a matching survey of 40 Pre owners, 87% said they were satisfied and 45% "very satisfied."
Nonetheless, writes RBC's Mike Abramsky in a report to clients Friday, "that's the highest score ever recorded in our prior Palm satisfaction surveys and above all other manufacturers except RIM (48%) and Apple (82%)."
Below the fold: what Apple (AAPL) and Palm (PALM) owners said they liked best and disliked most about their smartphones.
Six out of 10 doctors prefer iPhones
Healthcare professionals would seem a natural market for smartphones, especially if the Obama administration makes good its campaign promise to computerize U.S. health care records.
But which smartphone will doctors and nurses be using?
Software Advice, an Austin-based resource for software buyers, tried to answer that question last week. In what it admits was not a "super-scientific" survey, it e-mailed a questionnaire to 700 healthcare professionals and processed 71 replies. The results, released on Tuesday, show an interesting mix of preferences that vary according to job description.
Apple vs. Palm: Fresh shots across the bow
To the delight of an armada of tech writers, Palm (PALM) has responded to the shot Apple (AAPL) fired across its bow last week with a cheeky little blast of its own.
The issue is whether Apple will continue to allow the Pre to sync seamlessly with iTunes, the feature of Palm's whizzy new smartphone that got the most attention in advance of its launch in early June.
Apple unleashed an iTunes software update last week that shut down the feature. It was accompanied by a sharply worded warning that — uncharacteristically — named names. The update, it said, had "disabled devices falsely pretending to be iPods, including the Palm Pre."
Palm responded with a quick workaround. In its description of the new features of an operating system update released Thursday, Palm's official blog saved the best — Steve Jobs-style — for last:
"Oh, and one more thing: Palm webOS 1.1 re-enables Palm media sync. That’s right — you once again can have seamless access to your music, photos and videos from the current version of iTunes (8.2.1)." (link) More
The trouble with Nokia's iPhone killer
No. 1 handset maker unveils (sorta) its iTunes and App Store killer to little fanfare.
By Anu Partanen, contributor
Finally, it is here! Nokia’s Ovi store, the cellphone giant’s answer to Apple's iTunes and App Store, and a central piece of the company’s new strategy. Well, actually, it has been here for a couple of months already, but who knew?
If you have not heard of Ovi, no one will blame you. Nokia (NOK), the Espoo, Finland-based handset manufacturer, has chosen a peculiar strategy for launching its new online storefront. The strategy being – no launch.
In short Ovi – “door” in company’s native Finnish – is a portal where Nokia phone users can access, store and share pictures, videos, music, maps, games, contacts, calendars, files and more. The online store is only one part of the service, a place where users can download free and paid content onto their devices. The service can be accessed both through a computer and a mobile device. More
Apple plays softball with Palm
As you may have heard, Apple (AAPL) on Wednesday pulled the plug on a much-hyped feature of the Palm Pre: its ability to sync seamlessly with iTunes.
On Thursday Palm's (PALM) shares took a nosedive, falling 7.4% in early trading from Wednesday's high as the rest of the market was enjoying a midsummer bull run.
But by the end of the trading day, Palm was back where it started Wednesday, no worse for wear.
Because, really, for all the fuss that the trade press made about the flap — Google News turned up 159 articles and 39 blog items — was this the best Apple could do?
Apple COO Tim Cook, who was running the shop while Steve Jobs was on medical leave, has been making threatening noises about Palm ever since his former colleague — and now bitter rival — Jon Rubinstein unveiled the device that many hailed as an iPhone killer.
“We think competition is good. It makes us all better. And we are ready to suit up and go against anyone," Cook told analysts on a earnings call in January.
“However,” he added, his voice rising, “we will not stand for having our IP [intellectual property] ripped off, and we’ll use whatever weapons that we have at our disposal. I don’t know that I can be clearer than that.” (link)
Apple, Palm seen cutting into BlackBerry sales
Growing competition from new smartphones carved into Research in Motion's (RIMM) June sales, according to a report to clients issued Wednesday by Piper Jaffray's T. Michael Walkley.
RIM's BlackBerry still has a huge market share — nearly 20% of the worldwide smartphone market, second only to Nokia (NOK), according to Gartner — but Walkley's retail checks found some erosion in BlackBerry position last month.
The problem, according to Walkley, is that carriers like Verizon (VZ), Sprint (S) and T-Mobile (DT) have been soft-peddling the BlackBerries and promoting new devices from Apple (AAPL) and Palm (PALM).
In particular, Walkley's checks found that:
