Wireless Mobility Blog

Pretend for a moment that you run a company that makes a really kick-ass product; a product that has been hailed in your industry has groundbreaking and has had all your competitors jostling to regain market share for years.   Now suppose you develop another product similar to the first one, but with other features, that looks like it will be an even bigger hit than the first one. You’d like to dominate the market in all areas possible, but you’re concerned that the second product may cut into profits from the first one.   That’s precisely the situation Apple may soon find itself in. A recent Pike & Fischer Broadband Advisory report noted that Wall Street analysts are somewhat concerned that, when it hits store shelves in June, iPhone (or whatever it will be called by then) could cut into sales of iPod.   That’s hardly surprising, considering that iPhone includes a built-in iPod; anyone who buys one probably won’t see the need to buy a separate music player. After all, who wants to carry around two devices that both do the same thing, when one of them also does other cool stuff?   Wait, it gets worse (or better): “Some analysts worry that consumers may delay purchasing new iPods as they wait for the June release of the iPhone, which will have the same functions and much more,” Pike & Fischer said in its report.   Could be, I suppose.

Here’s something for all you mobile shutterbugs out there: Exclaim, a provider of wireless and Web applications, recently launched version 6.0 of its Pictavision photo- sharing software for mobile phones.   With Pictavision, users can transform any mobile phone that’s enabled with BREW, Java or SYMBIAN into a tool for sharing and finding video and photos through a variety of media Web sites including KODAK EASYSHARE Gallery, dotPhoto, Flickr, Adobe Photoshop Showcase, and SmugMug.   Pictavision’s interface is designed to make this sharing quick and easy. Among its features are:

• Text and voice tagging
• Background upload of photos and videos
• Multi-lingual support (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese)
• Integrated MMS

“Pictavision lets you take a photo, add a voice caption, send it as a greeting, and save it online in just four clicks, making it the easiest way to take, save and share photos and videos from a camera phone,” the product’s Web site says.   Pictavision is provided on a subscription basis, with plans starting at $3.99. It’s available through the following U.S.

Surprise, surprise. Cisco is suing Apple over the ‘iPhone’ trademark. Well, it does come as somewhat of a surprise, since up until Cisco announced the lawsuit yesterday afternoon, it appeared the companies were on the verge of an agreement regarding the name. I guess the agreement must have fallen through at the last moment.   To be honest, the lawsuit surprises me quite a bit, since I just assumed Apple had worked out the legal details of iPhone before announcing the product.

I suppose it says something about my level of geekiness (in every positive sense of the word) that last night I went home and spent the evening watching the video of Steve Jobs’ Macworld keynote speech. At roughly two hours, the speech represented a time investment equal to that of a feature-length movie. And it was worth every second.

I came away from watching the keynote with a firm conviction that Jobs and Apple not only are masters of product design, but also of theater.