It looks like the press is starting to notice T-Mobile's Hotspot@Home service. All are very complimentary about the technology, the only issue is the lack of choice in handsets.
There are also rumors floating around about HTC testing a client for our Windows Mobile devices. Hopefully they can release a client in the near future. The Samsung SGH-T739 UMA phone was approved by the FCC July 13th and it looks like it will be sold by T-Mobile (hopefully soon). On my front, so far so good, T-Mobile HotSpot@Home service is working very well.
Last week Apple announced that is had sold 270,000 iPhone and accessories (what a crock), while AT&T only reported 146,000 activations. The activation number is probably closer to the real number of iPhones sold with close to 1 accessory per sale. The numbers make total sense when you look at the accessory market for the iPod. Apple is still touting the 1 Million mark by the end of the year, with accessories I would say that it is achievable, without them I don't see it.
When my wife and I encounter college or even high school students, we ask them about the iPhone. Here are some of the responses we get:
- Everybody thinks it is cool (and it is)
- Expensive
- Never buy a first generation Apple product
and the most interesting;
- They don't need their phone to be a music player. They want their phone to have voice and text messaging, that's it.
The bottom line is that the majority of college and high school students can't afford the iPhone, much less the AT&T service. This leaves the Apple devotees with cash and gadget freaks. Not as big a market as everyone is touting, but probably enough to establish a foothold in the smartphone segment...
4smartphone.com, my Hosted Exchange provider is rolling out Exchange 2007 for new accounts and will be providing a migration path in the next couple of weeks for Exchange 2003 users like myself. I have been with them for 19 months and very happy with the service (only 2 outages), I love having ActiveSync server which automatically syncs my contacts, tasks and calendar to and from my T-Mobile Wing. It is great to have the information propagated without having to think of where you entered it (Outlook, Outlook Web Access, or Pocket Informant/Pocket Breeze on my Wing). And with Exchange 2007 I will be able to view HTML email on my Wing along with the additional security of being able to wipe my device should I loose it. I can't wait.
This week:
- I continue to work on a review of the Sunny solar charger.
- I am working on setting my DFL-210 as a VPN server
- I am planning on installing MusicBridge which syncs iTunes and WMP libraries along with all the associated tags and album art. This could be the Holy Grail of music player interoperability...
Note that the 270,000 sales was the total from the first 30 hours being on sale, or 20 hours of stores being open.
Yes, do consider that accessories were included in the sales (I'd never heard that before), but also consider that it's not the number sold to date.
Posted by: Chris Carlin | July 30, 2007 at 03:16 PM
The sales reports was for the third quarter. Your are right, since the quarter ended on 6/30, the sales number only accounts for the time the stores were open between the evening of 6/29 and the close of business on 6/30.
Posted by: Stephen Skarlatos | July 31, 2007 at 08:06 AM