Category: Tech

According to a recent Neilsen study, Android sales are rising past the iPhone; 27 percent of U.S. smartphone sales are attributed to Google’s Android, with 23 percent going to Apple’s iPhone. While these numbers show only U.S. sales, Canalys estimates that Android smart phone sales grew 886 percent worldwide during the second quarter of this year. We must also keep in mind that the Nielsen numbers only account for one week of iPhone 4 sales.

It’s all comes down to numbers. While Apple releases a new iPhone every year on one carrier, Android seems to have multiple handsets coming out on every carrier on a monthly basis. Customers thinking about getting an iPhone most likely have to make the harder choice of switching carriers. Those looking for an Android phone simply have to choose one from their current carrier.

Android still has some work to do, though. 71 percent of Android users say their next phone will be another Android device, while 21 percent said they will be switching to iPhone on the next go-round. This pales in comparison to the iPhone, which has 89 percent of users looking forward to the next iPhone release.

Android and iPhone are both in difficult positions. While iPhone’s exclusivity and closed atmosphere has given them the ability to control user experience, it also blocks users from doing whatever they would like with their expensive new handsets. This is why jailbreaking is such a common practice, even among the less tech savvy crowd.

Even though the Library of Congress ruled that jailbreaking is not a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, thus making it a legal practice, Apple is still looking to take action against it. In a bulletin on their support forum, it looks like they’re thinking about bricking iDevices that violate their rules:

“Apple strongly cautions against installing any software that hacks the OS. It is also important to note that unauthorized modification of the iOS is a violation of the Phone end-user license agreement and because of this, Apple may deny service for an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch that has installed any unauthorized software.”

Because of their openness, the Android platform is also suffering from rampant software piracy. Rather than buy apps from the Marketplace, users can simply download copies of the software and install them on their devices without paying. Just recently, they added a feature that will allow developers to check whether the running copy has been paid for.

As Android enjoys some accelerated growth early in their development, it remains to be seen if they can sustain it. Android will need to slow fragmentation of the OS to provide a more stable, safe, and consistent user experience. They also need to tighten up the Marketplace. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Apple will need to decide whether they will release a little control to keep users happy.

via GigaOM, SFGate

New York Times Co. said in a statement today that they will offer a method to help other publishers deliver content to digital platforms such as Apple’s iPad and iPhone devices. Individual publishers and media that take advantage of the technology will continue to control and own their advertising and subscriptions while New York Times Co. collects licensing and maintenance fees. The new product will be called Press Engine.

“This is part of the multi-faceted move into new technology. They’ve got the content, they’ve got the brainpower. We’ll see if people will pay for this stuff.” — Ed Atorino, analyst at Benchmark Co. in New York

The product will be introduced in the fourth quarter. Among the first to take advantage are The Telegraph Media group, publisher of the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph, and A.H. Belo Corp., the Dallas-based owner of the Dallas Morning News. According to data from the Newspaper Association of America, print advertising sales fell 11 percent in the U.S. in the first quarter. Publishers are in desperate need of a way to replace that revenue and this could be just what the industry needs.

In January, the New York Times will be launching a new online subscription-based model, limiting access to much of their content for paid subscribers only. While they already have a free iPad app, they will also be selling an enhanced Apple iPad application to work alongside it. Release of Press Engine comes after other publishers kept asking about it.

“Over the last year there’s been a particular amount of interest from different clients asking whether we would be willing to license the code of our own New York Times application.” — Christine Topalian, a director of the News Services division at the Times

This platform not only brings revenue in for Times Co., but also extends the possibilities for other companies and shows us one idea for ways to diversify the publishing business. Before today, Times Co. had declined 29 percent this year. This announcement brought a rise of “58 cents, or 6.6 percent, to $9.32, at 12 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.”

via Bloomberg, Adage

The mobile market is constantly exploding. Advances in mobile device technology, and high-speed data connectivity (4G, WiMAX, etc.) are taking your cell phone well beyond a simple device for making calls and texting. This also means that mobile devices are encroaching on other areas. For instance, do you need a fancy GPS device in your car when your mobile can do the same thing? Now, mobile providers want to do away with your plastic credit cards by allowing your smart phone to authorize payments.

AT&T and Verizon Wireless want to bring this technology, often called contactless payments, to the forefront. It’s not new, but it hasn’t caught on on a large scale. This is surprising because this is a technology that many consumers want. As our mobile devices take over more and more facets of our lives, it’s only natural that making payments would become one of them. The major stumbling block comes with adoption. While we as consumers seem to want the technology, we aren’t going to jump on the bandwagon until we know it will work at our favorite shops. On the other side, retailers aren’t going to spend the money to update their systems until there is a large enough base of customers to support them. Looks like a catch-22.

I’d wager that most people will leave their credit cards or wallet at home before they leave their cell phone. On the same note, many people in the black community will probably own a cell phone, but not have access to a credit or debit card at all. This is why we see things like buy-here pay-here and payday loans running rampant in our communities. Prepaid “credit” cards like the Rush Card are another symptom of this situation. Being able to used your phone for payment could be a partial solution.

Another angle here is the growing popularity of location. It’s a double-edge sword in regards to privacy, but could be an excellent way to protect your assets. Your handset would have an RFID chip embedded in it, a short-range radio signal to identify your virtual credit card. This would be combined with a PIN to authorize your purchase and could also integrate with the GPS in your phone to verify your location. Retailers could potentially send data about sales/promotions back to your phone. Imagine a scenario where you are walking around your favorite store and get alerted to nearby deals (who listens to those annoying sales announcements, anyway?). When you see something you like, buying it is as simple as laying your phone down and entering your PIN.

As Fast Company notes, Apple may play a larger part in all this than other phone manufacturers. They have already been researching this technology and have been “very aggressively patenting ideas in the contactless credit card/smart phone space–including rethinking many aspects of the traditional shopping experience.” Hopefully, they don’t end up trying to monopolize or deadlock mobile payments via the patent office.

via Bloomberg, Fast Company

The Slate Group, owned by The Washington Post, is shutting down The Big Money. Launched two years ago and sponsored by American Express and Infiniti, this spin-off was supposed to be a business media site that leveraged Slate’s existing brand and the financial crisis. According to Slate Group editor-in-chief Jacob Weisberg and publisher John Alderman, the site was “not pointed toward profitability on a fast enough timetable.” They went on to say that they “struggled to grow the site’s traffic to carry enough ad inventory to run a profitable business.”

Just a short while ago in May, Weisberg was boasting a 52 percent increase in revenues for the Slate Group during the first quarter. He also mentioned that they were one of the few publishers expanding on web journalism while others were being forced to cut back. This is obviously no longer the case and it’s interesting that such a major move as shutting down one of their properties would come in such a short time after.

Even though The Big Money didn’t make it, Weisberg and Alderman are quick to point out that these problems are centered around The Big Money. The Slate Group is doing well as a whole with a “strong first half” and revenue up 26 percent during the first six months of this year. Other properties like TheRoot.com and ForeignPolicy.com are said to be “doing well.”

The Slate will still be covering business, choosing to redirect The Big Money to a Slate Business page. A note on this landing page greets readers of The Big Money, saying: “Welcome to Slate’s Business and Technology section. The Big Money ceased publication on July 30, but the great business coverage you’ve come to expect from it continues here on Slate. Look below for the newest business and technology stories.”

The Big Money editor Jim Ledbetter is joining Slate as a full-time, staff business writer. Publisher Brendan Monagahan will be a VP of business development, in charge of developing alternative revenue streams and partnerships. Only time will tell if The Big Money was simply mis-handled, or if it’s demise points to deeper issues within The Slate Group.

via Slate to Close ‘The Big Money’

According to Wired, a Twitter account by the name of @samsungukmobile has reached out to frustrated iPhone 4 owners. Samsung is apparently handing out free Galaxy S smartphones to people who have tweeted about their mishaps with the iPhone. They simply ask for your contact details and set you up for the Galaxy S handset hook-up. Sounds like a scam, right? According to Tiffany Nieuwland, it’s legit:

“My iPhone and I have been inseparable for almost a month now, tomorrow being one month since the iPhone OS 4 launched. But the honeymoon period ended this week as repeated dropped calls, and a sudden unexplainable inability to make or receive calls or send texts left me disgruntled.

“So I did what anyone else would do: I vented my frustration on Twitter. Imagine my surprise, then, when this morning I am tweeted by Samsung offering me a free Galaxy S, their latest phone. Too good to be true? I decided to investigate.

“I called a friend at Samsung, and though she was initially sceptical, it has now been confirmed: the campaign is legit. Samsung is so confident about the superiority of the Galaxy S that they’re sending free ones to existing iPhone customers so they can decide for themselves.”

A Samsung spokesperson later revealed that this is an official promotion. They told Wired: “Recently there has been a real increase in online activity from consumers dissatisfied with some of our competitors’ products. We decided to contact a cross section of individuals to offer them a free Samsung Galaxy S as a replacement, as we’re confident that once people have the phone in their hands, they’ll see how impressive it is for themselves.”

An interesting spin on the try-before-you-buy concept with a little social media monitoring and marketing thrown in. Other brands should definitely take notice. This is almost text-book stuff for many social media marketers out there, but many companies still aren’t seeing the light.

The Samsung Galaxy S is an Android 2.1 phone with a 4″ AMOLED display. Android is nipping at the iPhone’s heels and Samsung is smart to get these devices into the hands of real customers. Even if those people don’t keep them, I’m positive they’ll be showing off their fancy free Android phones to family and friends.

New technology developed by Ford and Nuance bring MyFord Touch driver connect technology to Ford vehicles. It is now easier to control your vehicle using only your voice. They have increased the number of first-level commands from 100 to 10,000. This makes it easier to control your vehicle using fewer steps and more natural language.

Nuance adds more advanced recognition abilities to SYNC, which allows you to use simple phrases like “Call John Smith,” “Find ice cream,” or “Add a phone.” This is how the number of steps required to complete commands is decreased, by increasing the natural language capabilities.

Ford originally came out with SYNC in 2007 and have steadily raised the bar since then. From 100 voice commands to 100,000, they’ve increased the system’s vocabulary by 100x, which makes for a more conversational experience between car and driver.

“Ford is committed to making voice recognition the primary user interface inside of the car because it allows drivers to keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel,” said Jim Buczkowski, director of Ford electronics and electrical systems engineering. “The improvements we’ve made will make it easier for drivers to use and interact with it, even those customers that have never used voice recognition before.”

More first-level commands means the user spends less time learning the system and navigating menus and more time getting things done. This also lowers the bar for the average person to jump right in and use the system. A few examples of the more direct first-level commands:

• “Call John Smith” dials the phone number associated with John in a connected phone’s phonebook directly – the user isn’t required to say “Phone” first.
• Direct commands related to destinations, like “Find a shoe store” or “Find a hotel,” place users in the navigation system menu where they will be walked through the POI search process.
• The command, “Add a phone,” will enter the phone pairing menu and walk users through the connection process – users don’t have to enter a phone submenu to initiate the pairing process.

As we have become more aware of the dangers of multi-tasking while driving, voice command is gaining popularity. One of the obstacles is the limitations of the system. We want to be able to simply say what we want and have the car do it, not learn to speak differently so that the system will understand. SYNC seems well on the way to becoming a system worthy of Knight Rider.

via Engadget

Google Voice Gets Less Annoying

The concept of Google Voice is an awesome one. A single number to rule all of your phone numbers, including features like call recording, custom forwarding, and voicemail transcription. I’m loving it. It’s just implemented sort of weird. One of those awkward design choices was with the mobile version. Whenever you made a call, GV would use your mobile data connection to establish the call. Google Voice has always created a special GV phone number for each of your contacts. Now, it will automatically remember and use these numbers to establish the call, speeding things up dramatically. via The Google Voice Blog

Redbox Goes At Netflix

Redbox became the fastest growing video chain in the US by dropping little kiosks in your neighborhood and letting you rent DVD’s from it for $1 dollar per day. The major chains couldn’t compete with that type of pricing. Now, Redbox is taking on their biggest competition by trying to compete with Netflix. Many people use Redbox to get new releases, but still use Netflix to get older movies. These are revenues that Redbox aims to get back by increasing the number of titles they carry and expanding onto the web. via Bloomberg

Facebook Sucks as Bad as Your Cable Company

According to a survey done by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Facebook is in “the bottom 5% of all private sector companies, and in the same range as the IRS tax e-filing system, airlines and cable companies.” Ouch! They scored a 64 out of 100, which is one of the lowest ranks of any company measured. You would think that with Facebook surpassing 500 million users, they must be enjoying the service, but this is obviously not the case. One theory as to why? Facebook holds a monopoly in the social networking department. via WSJ

Skype Adds Multitasking and Free 3G Calling

The Skype team has wasted no time in supporting the latest iPhone features in their new app. You can now receive Skype calls in the background while you’re doing other stuff or your phone is locked. You can also access other features of your phone while in the middle of a Skype call, like email, movie listings, and maps. They ‘ve also taken advantage of the iPhone 4’s Retina display and have decided to curb plans to charge for calls over 3G. Definitely a score for iPhone owners. via The Big Blog: Everything New at Skype HQ

Can’t make it to Comic-con in San Diego this year? Don’t worry about it. MTV and MySpace have got your back. MTV News and MySpace have joined forces and, by their powers combined, you will be able to access exclusive live broadcasts of the festivities. This is exciting news for Comic-con fans, who will get “immediate and interactive access to stars from the most highly anticipated upcoming films and television shows.”

Beginning Thursday, the live shows will hit the Net on a daily basis from the MySpace & MTV Tower at Hard Rock Hotel San Diego. MTV Movies Editor Josh Horowitz will host. Each show will stream simultaneously on MySpace and MTV.com and viewers will be able to participate in real time by posting comments and questions to have their favorite celebrities answer live.

Be sure to point your browser at MTV.com or MySpace at the following times to catch Comic-Con International 2010:

Thursday at 3 p.m. ET/ noon PT
Guests include Seth Rogen from “The Green Hornet”; the cast from “Red”; director Robert Rodriguez and Danny Trejo from “Machete”; and many more.

Friday at 3 p.m. ET/ noon PT
Guests include Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund and director Joseph Kozinski from “Tron: Legacy”; Michael Cera, Anna Kendrick, Jason Schwartzman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ellen Wong and director Edgar Wright from “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”; and many more.

Saturday at 6 p.m. ET/ 3 p.m. PT
Guests include director/writer/producer Joss Whedon and surprise appearances.

There will also be pre-recorded interviews with the casts of “Glee” and “The Vampire Diaries,” Sylvester Stallone, Jon Favreau, Cam Gigandet, Sigourney Weaver, Zachary Quinto, Stan Lee, Jason Bateman, Aaron Eckhart, David Duchovny, Guillermo del Toro, Molly Shannon, Patton Oswalt, David Fincher, Joel McHale, Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, Joshua Jackson, Kristin Bauer and Joe Manganiello from “True Blood,” and more.

With this partnership with MTV.com and Comic-con, their profile redesigns, and their recent talent grab from Threadbox MySpace obviously has a plan in effect. They are still in a good position and, while Facebook has just passed 500 million users, I don’t think they need to compete directly to be successful.

A group of researchers from Northeastern University and Harvard University have analyzed the sentiment of 300 million tweets over a period of 3 years. This is enough data to give us a pretty accurate picture of how Americans are feeling as they tweet throughout the day and week.

This tweet data was then compared to the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW), which “provides a set of normative emotional ratings for a large number of words in the English language.” They also mashed up that data with information from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Google Maps API and more. What they ended up with is a visualization showing our nation’s moods over time. Only according to Twitter, of course.

The data is pretty interesting. Some of it is as we expect. Our moods take a dive around Thursday and we are much happier on the weekends than during the weekdays. Looks like most of us aren’t too happy to be at work and that whole hump day thing seems to have an adverse affect on how we feel. We are also happier early in the day and later in the evening, presumably because of that whole work thing.

Where things get more interesting is in the geographical representation of the data. The researchers used density-preserving cartograms to display the data. These are maps that take into account the volume of tweets from an area when drawing the map. What you end up with is a map that represents each area’s size by the number of tweets coming out of it, which makes it easy to see which areas are tweeting the most at any given time.

From the geographical data, we see that people on the West Coast are generally much happier than people on the East Coast three hours ahead. East and West coasters follow the same general pattern, but tweeters on the West coast just didn’t get as emo as people on the East. One exception seems to be Florida. Watching the video, you can see that it doesn’t dip as low in mood as the rest of the East Coast, keeping pace with West Coast for the most part.

By taking a look at some basic rankings from the Census Bureau we can take things a step further. States on the East Coast have the largest populations of black people. These include New York, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia. Does this mean that black people have bad attitudes, or is this as flaw in the sentiment analysis? Sentiment analysis is not an exact science. It doesn’t understand things like sarcasm or slang. I doubt Affective Norms for English Words is able to pick up on these things either. Given the large population of black people on Twitter, this may have had some effect on these results.

via Time-Lapse Twitter Visualization Shows America’s Moods

As of this morning, Facebook has passed the 500 million user mark. According to Zuckerberg, these 500 million users are actively using Facebook to stay connected to friends, family, and people they care about. With Facebook being as popular as it is, it’s no surprised they have been able to reach this new milestone, but that doesn’t make it any less important.

To celebrate this event, Facebook is launching Facebook Stories. This is an application that can be used to share your individual stories about the impact that Facebook has had on your life. Many Facebook users have had interesting experiences related to the site, whether it be connecting with a long lost relative or raising awareness for a cause. –

In a video, Zuckerberg goes on to say that he “would have never imagined” most of these stories would come out of Facebook when he started it six years ago. Zuckerberg and his team seem to be very grateful for the “global movement” their users have created and have put up a photo album showing personal Thank You’s from Facebook employees.

Zuckerberg is confident that Facebook will eventually reach 1 billion users. It took them about six years to reach 400 million, which happened about 6 months ago. That’s 200 million users a year. Will Facebook reach 600 million by the end of this year? Can they maintain this ridiculous growth rate? Have they peaked? With the way social media is constantly changing and spreading, it’s hard to tell what will happen.

Tonight, Zuckerberg will do an Interview with Diane Sawyer. This is a major event as Zuckerberg hasn’t done such an interview in about 2 years. As a rule, he avoids high-profile interviews, so this should be an interesting event. Besides talking about hitting the 500 million user milestone, we can assume Zuckerberg will have to answer hard questions about the privacy issues they had earlier this year.

Many users quit over the whole thing. We also have Zuckerberg’s “meltdown” at the D8 conference and the Facebook movie, which have tainted Zuckerberg’s image. While this doesn’t seem to have caused a dent in their growth, Facebook still needs to clean things up if they ever hope to reach the 1 billion user mark.

There is much more to Google Images search than meets the eye. It has evolved over time to make searching for images on the web as easy as possible and packs some pretty serious algorithms on the back-end. Google has an index of over 10 billion images. Out of the nine subspecies of leopards, each has a distinct pattern of spots. Google Images can recognize the difference, returning just leopards of a particular subspecies. That’s pretty amazing.

There is still a way to go in search for images and video on the web, so Google is redesigning their image search interface to match the “scope and beauty of this fast-growing visual web.” The new design includes:

• Dense tiled layout designed to make it easy to look at lots of images at once. We want to get the app out of the way so you can find what you’re really looking for.
• Instant scrolling between pages, without letting you get lost in the images. You can now get up to 1,000 images, all in one scrolling page. And we’ll show small, unobtrusive page numbers so you don’t lose track of where you are.
• Larger thumbnail previews on the results page, designed for modern browsers and high-res screens.
• A hover pane that appears when you mouse over a given thumbnail image, giving you a larger preview, more info about the image and other image-specific features such as “Similar images.”
• Once you click on an image, you’re taken to a new landing page that displays a large image in context, with the website it’s hosted on visible right behind it. Click anywhere outside the image, and you’re right in the original page where you can learn more about the source and context.
• Optimized keyboard navigation for faster scrolling through many pages, taking advantage of standard web keyboard shortcuts such as Page Up / Page Down. It’s all about getting you to the info you need quickly, so you can get on with actually building that treehouse or buying those flowers.

Of course, Google is all about that ad revenue and they’ve come up with a way to make those ads more relevant to your image searches. These are called Google Image Search Ads. They will appear just like most of the Google ads you’re used to, except the advertiser will be able to include an image along with the text. According to director of search products Ben Ling, “This allows you to reach hundreds of million of users who are searching on Google on a daily basis.” Google image search is already getting over a billion pageviews a day and I suspect the placement and relevancy of these ads may make for higher click-through rates than your standard text ads.

via Ooh! Ahh! Google Images presents a nicer way to surf the visual web

Hollywood studios, technology companies, and cable providers are banding together to create a library of media that will all be available in the cloud. The group is called The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem and they have called this initiative UltraViolet.

The DECE has been working on this for a couple of years now. The group consists of around 60 companies, so it’s easy to see how this could get complicated pretty quickly. We could also see the entire thing deadlocked as these 60 companies, all with separate interests, try to make decisions. They promise to have tech specs and and licensing details by the end of this year, though.

According to the president of Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem LLC, Mitch Singer, UltraViolet will let consumers buy and access digital media through smartphones, Web-connected televisions, tablet computers, PCs and game consoles.

“We’re going to give consumers full flexibility, choice and freedom in where they can access their library of content.” — Mitch Singer

Thinking about the details of how all this would work could make your head hurt, so UltraViolet will handle all the details for you. It boils down to these companies coming to an agreement about a global DRM scheme. This type of Digital Rights Management would be easier to deal with for us as consumers because it would be supported across multiple devices and might provide less headaches and limitations than what we’re used to.

Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Sony, Comcast, Netflix, and Microsoft are all on board. We also have companies like HP, Panasonic, and Nokia. The names we don’t see are Apple and Disney, which could either be a huge plus for UltraViolet or an epic FAIL. What this amounts to is an iTunes competitor and Steve Jobs is having nothing to do with it. Jobs is also Disney’s largest shareholder, which may explain their absence from DECE.

There are a couple of ways this will play out. Without support from Apple, which is probably the largest distributor of digital media on the Internet, UltraViolet will fail. On the other hand, consumers might find the UltraViolet way more convenient, forcing Apple to abandon their solo approach and join the pack. Now, we just have to wait and see if DECE can get it together in make this actually happen.

See Also:

• Studios, Tech Companies Move Closer to Universal Content Access
• With DECE’s UltraViolet, We’re About To See Just How Powerful Apple Really Is
• “UltraViolet” is Short for “Giant Media DRM Cloud Coalition Featuring Everyone Except Apple and Disney”

Today, the Internet just got a little bigger as .CO domain names open up to the public. The .com domains are mostly gone. It’s almost impossible to find a good one these days with more than 90 million of them already taken. Tens of thousands of people are already estimated to be pre-registered for .CO domains.

“Today’s launch of the .CO domain represents the next phase in the growth and development of the Internet. The .CO domain will create new opportunities in global commerce, content development, social media and other forms of interactivity, which will enrich the overall Internet experience for everyone.” — Juan Diego Calle, CEO of .CO Internet.

This new batch of .CO domain names will enable individuals, businesses and organizations to acquire global, credible, and easily recognizable domain names that fit their online business or branding needs. The average person or brand has to cycle through an endless number of domains before finally choosing one that they are not really happy with. Some companies see this as more than just simple brand protection. Rather than trying to simply hold onto their current brand, they are looking to extend their brand or expand their online offerings in a way that wasn’t possible before due to the limitations in domain names. For example, Overstock.com paid $350,000 to acquire ‘O.CO ’ to target new audiences and expand its global brand.

“The O.CO domain presented us with an unprecedented opportunity to add a meaningful online presence that will enhance recognition for the “O” brand, align with current marketing initiatives, and make it easier for shoppers to find our products and services online. Dollar for dollar, it’s a homerun and well worth the investment because it reinforces among consumers that ‘O’ is synonymous with ‘Overstock’.” — Overstock.com Chairman and CEO Patrick Byrne.

.CO domains come with added security to prevent abuse. .CO domain ownership will be highly transparent and they’ve instituted a Rapid Takedown Policy to suspend or remove domains in cases where phishing, pharming, malware, or other significant criminal and/or security threats have been established. When it comes down to it, .CO breathes a breath of fresh air into the stagnant domain market. Not only is it opening a bunch of new names with a globally recognizable TLD, but it’s also opening possibilities. Check out http://www.opportunity.co/ to see a showcase of brands already using .CO.

It looks like efforts by Steve jobs to end Antennagate have failed to turn the story around. People are still upset and a free case just isn’t cutting it. As this whole thing began to spin out of control, we saw Consumer Reports unable to recommend purchase of the device. This was despite that they say it’s the best smartphone available. Of course, if you can’t make calls with the phone, that’s kind of a big deal. Around the same time, Apple’s stock took a pretty steep dive.

Apple has been on the come up this year, overtaking Microsoft early on. It looked like Apple might be entering some type of golden age. How quickly things can take a turn for the worst, though. While the iPhone 3GS is arguably the gold standard not only for Apple products, but for smartphones in general, the iPhone 4 just slightly misses the mark.

On the other side of things, Microsoft has completely redeemed themselves from that whole Vista thing. Windows 7 is selling like hotcakes. Microsoft is paying attention to the direction of technology and going with the flow, integrating Office 2010 and Outlook with social media using Social Connector. They are taking their place as a competitor on the desktop and in the cloud. They are working hard to actually offer value and stay relevant, which is a change from them simply dictating what relevant is.

And maybe that is where the problem lies. Apple has done whatever they’ve wanted up until this point. They have created trends and pushed technology, even for those who are not fans of the company. People who are fans are usually very passionate about Apple and their products. In this case, Apple made a design choice that they felt was right. They focused a little too much on form and not enough on function in one particular area: antenna design. They also fell short in responding to complaints and, when they did, they refused to take blame and even seemed nonchalant and annoyed by their customers.

It will be interesting to see if Apple continues on a downward trend. Android phones are improving and multiplying. Tablets/Slates will be coming later this year featuring Android, WebOS, and some variation of Windows. Christmas is going to by crazy. Apple may have been the first to reach higher ground, but it looks like they might be outnumbered and surrounded.

via Lost Crown: Apple No Longer Worth More Than Microsoft.