When Steve Jobs got on stage Wednesday and told an audience of journalists that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) was now the largest mobile company in terms of revenue, larger than Nokia (NYSE: NOK) even, you could hear Finland cocking their rifles and firing up the jets. Apple fanbois now have a sound bite that get to throw out every time someone says anything about Nokia, whether it be that they make $20 devices for the emerging economies, or that Nokia ships more devices in a quarter than Apple does in a year, or that Nokia makes 4 out of every 10 smartphones, or that Steve Jobs’ is an idiot for counting the iPod Touch and Mac laptops as mobile products, none of that now matters to the zealot crowd.

The opposite effect is expected from Nokia fanbois, who now not only have to defend the company’s devices — the Eseries models are built better than the iPhone, the Nseries not so much, but let’s not talk about that, Symbian is more open, Maemo supports Flash 9 — but also mention that Nokia’s Q4 2009 results came out a day after the iPad/iTampon announcement and put Nokia on top of Apple in terms of revenue.

Nokia felt so upset by Jobs’ statement that Mark Squires, Head of Social Media, published a blog post defending the company.

You know what? None of this matter. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Products matter. Not your financial results, not your slick commercial produced by an expensive and world renowned creative group, but the actual plastic and metal physical items that you sell to people.

So when someone tells you that company A is better than company B because of some bullshit fact that has no relation to why either of you purchased your devices to being with, just tell them to fuggedaboutit.

It’s Thursday and that means I’m watching Cranky Geeks, a video podcast with one of my favorite technology pundits, John C. Dvorak. Joining him, on practically every show, is Sebastian Rupley, Editor in Chief of the GigaOM Network. He says in episode 197, and I quote:

“We got one [the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Phone] at GigaOM yesterday. I held it. It’s a very nice phone, it’s very thin, it says Google on the back, and it looks very slick and everything, but we’ve decided already that it’s not going to be an iPhone killer. No way.”

When asked by Dvork why, Sebastian went on to say: “Because there aren’t a large number of apps on there.”

If you’re not uttering the word fail, repeatedly, in your mind, then I don’t know what to tell you. Knocking a phone, hell knocking a platform, simply because one has X number of apps while the number has 2X or 3X is simply being ignorant. The killer app for Macs, in the early days, was desktop publishing. The killer app for the personal computer was spreadsheets. The killer app for the internet was email. What’s the killer app for mobile phones? For some it may be GPS, for others it’s internet access anywhere at anytime, soon it will be mobile payments, but either way, it’s a handful of use cases.

100,000 vs. 20,000 vs. 100 vs. 1, the winner = give anyone a web browser, an alarm clock, and Google Maps and they’ll be happy.

You’ve probably heard about Layar and their augmented reality service/platform. We covered them for quite a few times on IntoMobile. The company has a compelling and super-interesting offering, and will probably be one of the leading augmented reality service providers in the future, aside from Google (NSDQ: GOOG). In that sense, I find them to be an interesting company to acquire.

I believe there are three companies that could benefit from having Layar’s technology (and people) under its belt:

• Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) – they certainly want to compete with Google and at the moment I don’t see them succeeding in the long-run.
• Nokia (NYSE: NOK) – same goes here. And it’s about time for Nokia to start thinking beyond its incumbent platforms to expand elsewhere.
• Samsung – which us the weakest of the three companies when it comes to services. Adding AR in to the mix could definitely make their bada platform a winner.

Other potential buyers could include LG, Motorola (NYSE: MOT) and maybe even Dell, a new player in the mobile world.

Earlier I suggested someone should acquire GyPSii. Maybe the ideal thing would be to buy both companies and merge their respective technologies in something that would create the “mobile location augmented reality social network.” Of course, a shorter name is a must in order to sell such a service.

As a sidenote, another augmented reality company that’s worth watching is metaio which makes the junaio platform, and has just opened it up.

Any thoughts?

This is almost completely off topic. Actually I’m talking about a very small laptop, so it’s kinda mobile related.

Anyway, I wanted to use my small influence as a blogger on IntoMobile to plead Acer to start selling the 11.6-inch Timeline AS1810T-8679 laptop in Europe.

At the moment this particular model is not available in Europe – ANYWHERE! Why is that is beyond me. All we have are some crappier versions which come with lower-end CPUs and less RAM. The version I want to buy comes with a dual core 1.3 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 processor and 4GB of RAM. It could be yours for $599 on Amazon, though unfortunately it’s currently unavailable.

That particular model is very close to my dream machine – it’s fast and portable enough so I could use it both at home (connected to a large monitor) and while travelling.

Please Acer – do something about it. Sending me a unit would be a nice thing to do. I’ll pay for it!

A few weeks ago, we found out Samsung is working on its own mobile OS – Bada. Right from the bat, we asked – who needs it? There are already several mobile operating systems available on the market and why would Samsung spend its resources on “yet another mobile OS” is beyond me. Do they actually expect to have some other handset maker to license Bada? Samsung is a huge handset maker, second only to Nokia (NYSE: NOK), and even if they end up as the only company which uses Bada, it’s still something — look at Nokia’s Series 40, for instance.

That made me think. Instead of going full-blown for the entire mobile OS, Samsung should offer its UI, TouchWIZ, to other handset makers. They already run it on several platforms — Windows Mobile, Android and Symbian included — plus TouchWIZ can perfectly sing along feature phones. Why not offer the widget-friendly interface to third parties. I love TouchWIZ and could see smaller handset makers adopting it over night. Samsung has invested heavily in TouchWIZ and it’s probably one of the best (if not the best) UI solutions out there. It’s certainly the only UI that works across that many platforms and that by itself is its strength. The Korean company could offer it as an off-the-shelf solution that works on top of any smartphone platform which is not made by Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). Plus, they could offer customization services for those who require something even more. Or open APIs and let the community do its magic.

What do you think? Is this the better way to go for Samsung? Drop us a comment if you have one.

Okay, so the question was going to get asked sooner or later, and given we are only a month or so out from the big day, I thought I’d jump in with it:

What Mobile devices/accessories are you planning to buy this Christmas?

There are a few reasons behind me asking the question – one is of course, that this dilemma is faced by many with some kind of gadget-fetish, but also perhaps from a more altruistic perspective, we might be able to help each other with suggestions, if we ‘crowdsource’ everyones plans together! I’ll get it going with some suggestions:

• Devices: The HTC Hero, which I thought was a very good device when I had hands-on time with it, should now be doing the rounds with the Operators at a slightly reduced price, compared to when it came out – that would make it good value if you fancy some Android goodness! Alternatively, if you want Maemo in your life, then the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N900 is going to slip in to the market just before Xmas it seems. The eponymous iPhone 3GS is also now becoming more widely available (in the UK at least) with Orange now selling it (and Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) to join shortly after Christmas).

• Accessories: 2009 has really been a year of Mobile speakers as far as I’m concerned, and Altec Lansing are as good as any. Particularly for me, their Orbit-M speaker was a breakthrough combination of portability and high fidelity. Other accessories I like are cases, and in that respect the recent addition to my accessories grotto is the iPhone 3GS variant of the Beyzacases Slimline Vertical Leather Case.

But never mind me – what are you planning to purchase within the mobile sphere, in the next month or so? It doesn’t have to be for you, it can also be a gift for someone near and hear – but hit us up with a comment and let us know where your hard earned moolah is going this Christmas!

A few weeks back, I wrote a post, asking which the laggiest handset you have used is – this was following a try-out of the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre, and my own suggestion that the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N96 I used a good while back didn’t seem to be too fast at the time either!

Well, it generated some responses, and I thought I’d just take a quick look over what the responses were – here they are, in all their glory:

• Nokia N95-3
• HTC Fuze (HTC Touch Pro)
• HTC Imagio
• Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) P990i
• HTC Mini S

Wowzer! Did anyone see three HTC devices in there? Ponderously, there’s a mixture of new AND old handsets, from Mini S, right through to the Imagio of today. But what’s more interesting is that they are all packing Windows Mobile – hmm, could that be the cause of the lagging?

Well, from my own personal experience of running an HTC TyTn, I can definitely say that it wasn’t the fastest thing ever, that’s for sure – and reviewing the Toshiba (OTCPK: TOSBF) TG01 recently (with a  1GHz CPU in it!), I was still seeing bad lagging issues in the WinMo camp. But all the fault can’t rest at the hands of the O/S (probably) – often if there’s a poor implementation on the hardware, that can create real issues too.

Fascinatingly though, HTC have been getting great reviews recently for their devices – and those have been packing both Android and WinMo – so apart from the Imagio, which is perhaps an anomaly (can anyone else confirm?), then maybe they have sorted the issues out…

Certainly I don’t think HTC are the only vendor out there with handset lag issues, there are some worse offenders for sure – so if you’ve got an opinion, hit us up for a comment and let us which device’s UI felt like swimming the wrong way in a river of treacle when you were using it!

Just the other day, I was in the local O2 (NYSE: TEF) shop, playing with the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre – having heard so much about it, but no opportunity to get hands-on, I was keen to see what the device could do.

Initially, I was really pleased to see an excellent implementation of both the capacitance screen sensitivity, but also of the UI – it really does look that nice, and in my mind at least, is a competitor for the iPhone UI for sure. A couple of swipes across the screen later, and I’d found the right way to control the UI for flipping between,  and closing Apps.

Of course the next logical test was to see what the keyboard was like, and so I decided to add a new contact, called “bob”. Leaving aside what I thought of the keyboard for a minute (hint: not great), my main surprise came when I went to store the handset – there was an appreciable lag, as compared with the rest of my usage of the handset to that point.

To test what I immediately surmised could be the problem, I then opened a video, and also made a calendar entry – this confirmed my initial thinking that substantial read/writes to the memory, via the O/S, were being hit with a  bit of a lag. Usage of the UI in general was super-smooth, but as soon as you called down to the OS (particularly if writing to memory), then there was definitely some slowdown.

Now I should put this in perspective: I’m used to being spoilt by the iPhone, which is incredibly fluid in it’s use, and rarely lags – only occasionally have I tripped it up. The Palm Pre was 90% good in this respect, and maybe just that 10% bad (slow) across certain invoked operations.

But that got me thinking – I have used some devices previously that were really not great in terms of the lag when you selected certain apps, or wanted to do certain things. And I bet the IntoMobile readership have had the same experience – therefore, can you remember the worst handset you ever had for lagging? And can you remember why the lag occurred (opening app, re-skinning etc)?

I’ll put forward the N96 as pretty laggy during general use…. I’m not sure  it is the worst handset that I’ve ever used for lag (that title surely belongs to one of the WinMo devices I had in early y2k!), but I’m open to suggestion from our readers! So it’s:

• What was the handset – make, model, if you can remember
• What were you doing with the handset that made it lag – keep it clean!

Answers on a postcard … (or at least in the comments on this post!)

This isn’t the first time I’m writing in praise of Sony’s small and stylish Vaio P notebook/netbook. And I’m not doing so only to get the attention of Sony’s PR folks who by now should send me a single unit free of charge for all the publicity they got at IntoMobile.

I really, really like its form factor. The Vaio P is a super small laptop, yet it’s perfectly sized. The problem is in the software – Vista runs slowly on it and I also want the instant-on option on such a small computer. On that note, I’m hoping that Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) could launch a similar product which would have pretty much everything the original Vaio P has, plus it would be capable for instant-on. In that sense, instead of using the Intel Atom CPU, that kind of a device should rely on some ARM-based processor like Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM)’s Snapdragon. Just imagine – you press a button and you can instantly start writing, browsing the web, playing music, video and so on. Instead of the Sony logo, the new device would wear Sony Ericsson’s colors, and that’s about it. Nothing too complicated – just use the winning form factor and if possible, make the device more affordable!

To be fair, there is some kind of instant-on function on the Sony Vaio P, but you can run only the limited number of applications. What I want to use the device is for writing and I can’t do that.

We’ve seen that Wistron’s smartbook prototype which is powered by Snapdragon and I like it. The problem, however, is that it’s not as portable as Sony Vaio P, and I’m not sure it has the so-much-needed (and so much repeated in the text above) instant-on capability.

I don’t care about the operating system. It could be Windows Mobile or something Linux-based (Android, Moblin, etc), whatever. I do care about the screen size – it should be able to display at least 1024 pixels in width (current Vaio P goes even further), and it should allow for WiFi connectivity. 3G is a plus, but not a must…

Am I asking for too much? It should be my portable writing device, which could also be used for Skype calls, web browsing, email, etc. Any thoughts?

A really great post has found its way to reddit from Jamie Zawinski, who’s a big name in developer circles (known as jwz), about his rough ride in trying to get a free tip calculator into the webOS App Catalog. Since I’ve been playing with Bell’s Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre for the last week and trying out homebrew applications, it really caught my eye. Here’s The Short Version of this particular programmer’s complaints, but I encourage you to read the whole thing if you’re packing a Palm Pre or developing on webOS.

• Inability to natively install applications from outside the market
• Requirement of a verified PayPal account and potential fees, even for free apps
• Forfeiting rights to post submitted applications anywhere other than the App Catalog

Let me preface my reply by saying that I’m not a developer, and don’t pretend to fully empathize with their wide-ranging plights and challenges when dealing with manufacturers, carriers, and end-users. However, a lot of this post raised some flags.

If you don’t want to play by Palm’s rules to get into the App Catalog (however reasonable/unreasonable they may be), don’t whine when your only option left is homebrew; making apps “off the grid” is not a bad starting spot for someone learning the webOS platform. Palm is in dire financial traits, and they need to harness their app market in order to stay in business – that entails some level of quality control, dealing with PayPal, code tweaks, and all that jazz that might come off as personal affronts to the more quixotic developers out there. How do you think Elevation Partners would feel if, when asking about third-party software strategy, Palm said “Developers can do whatever the hell they want! Woo, open source!” and cracked open a Bud? Instead, Palm saw what a financially successful player, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), was doing right (taking control of the application stream) and doing wrong (making draconian app submission decisions) and built their strategy around that. Sure, it might not be the supposed open-source programming Nirvana found in Maemo 5 or even Android, but it’s a balanced approach that helps everyone win at least a little. If you’re writing free apps and you don’t want to jump through the hoops, homebrew is not that complicated for end users.

1. Enter dev mode
2. Get Quick Install and your recovery ROM (Sprint, Bell)
3. Install fileCoaster

There, you’re set. You have a second on-device app store that Palm doesn’t control. Go nuts. Is that really an insurmountable barrier for entry? Will an app really have that many fewer eyeballs on it than if it were in the App Catalog? And if the software is free anyway, why would the creator care?

If developers want to support the webOS ecosystem with a free app, or make a buck with a premium one, they should be ready to make some compromises, including small code changes for the sake of QA. It’s not like Palm is turning into a bunch of Nazis; they aren’t taking shots at the homebrew scene, like Apple does with jailbreakers – in fact, Palm encourages the homebrew scene. The exclusive rights to the code is simply Palm’s way of ensuring the official market remains valuable. Why would anyone use the App Catalog if the homebrew scene had all of the same apps plus others that didn’t make it though the hoops? Sure, end users would get their apps, and devs could do whatever they wanted, but Palm wouldn’t get their cut, which ultimately is bad news for the whole platform and anyone developing on it.

As for the $99 annual developer fee, someone has to handle the submissions; even if your app is free, that someone answering the e-mails has to get paid. If you can’t be bothered to manage a ubiquitous and widely-accepted payment method like PayPal to handle that tiny bit of bureaucracy, then why should they be bothered to look at your submission? The thing that probably set me off most on jwz’s post was the insinuation that Palm was dead because they’re abusing webOS developers like a bunch of naughty puppies. First off, the phone has been out three months, and as I’m sure you can imagine, it takes a lot of manpower to make an app store ready for primetime – calling the time of death at this point is ridiculous. Secondly, this is the harshest amount of discontent I’ve heard from a webOS developer so far, and I’m tempted to think the majority are still willing to stick with Palm through the official App Catalog launch. Let’s hear from other developers who have tried their hand at the submission process, and see who has been satisfied (or at least understanding), and who has been pushed to another mobile platform. Feel free to comment with your own personal experiences.