Boy has there been tremendous mobile news this week. A few of the more interesting news announcements I have seen are the release of the Google T-Mobile G1 Phone which is based on Android/OHA. What is really interesting about this story in particular is that Android looks like it will find its way into many devices beyond phones.
This phone could be very interesting and it remains to be seen how Google competes with Apple in the UI game. While Apple has a simple but elegant design to its solutions, Google's solutions are simple and plain. Do consumers want plain when they can have fancy? Maybe -- if the price is right. This of course explains why T-Mobile has more attractive prices than AT&T -- allowing free Gmail service -- which will not require a data plan. On AT&T you need to drop $50/month for a data plan in order to check email. Then again, what do you do in Gmail when you get an email with an important link and don't have a data plan? I guess you wait till you get to a hotspot.
Another bit of interesting news is the new format called slotMusic for purchasing physical music from the likes of SanDisk, EMI Music, SONY BMG, Universal Music Group and others.
In both cases the news items are late to the game and one wonders how they may change markets. For example the Google phone is way behind Apple -- does this disadvantage help them because they had a chance to improve on the iPhone.
In the case of slotMusic -- who knows -- does anyone buy music that doesn't come from a network somewhere? We will see but certainly this new format will make it easier to sell music in retail locations as the packaging is a fraction of what a CD takes. At least in theory.
This phone could be very interesting and it remains to be seen how Google competes with Apple in the UI game. While Apple has a simple but elegant design to its solutions, Google's solutions are simple and plain. Do consumers want plain when they can have fancy? Maybe -- if the price is right. This of course explains why T-Mobile has more attractive prices than AT&T -- allowing free Gmail service -- which will not require a data plan. On AT&T you need to drop $50/month for a data plan in order to check email. Then again, what do you do in Gmail when you get an email with an important link and don't have a data plan? I guess you wait till you get to a hotspot.
Another bit of interesting news is the new format called slotMusic for purchasing physical music from the likes of SanDisk, EMI Music, SONY BMG, Universal Music Group and others.
In both cases the news items are late to the game and one wonders how they may change markets. For example the Google phone is way behind Apple -- does this disadvantage help them because they had a chance to improve on the iPhone.
In the case of slotMusic -- who knows -- does anyone buy music that doesn't come from a network somewhere? We will see but certainly this new format will make it easier to sell music in retail locations as the packaging is a fraction of what a CD takes. At least in theory.
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