Clarion Content

We told you a few weeks back that the iPhone was coming, it was moving toward a tipping point of dominance. Two new recent harbingers said to the Clarion Content, if not the Apple iPhone, a hand held computer of some sort is on the way to your palm soon (if it is not already there.)

The word from tech bloggers and other industry experts including Computerworld is that Apple is going to sell its iPhone at Walmart. It may even be creating a special "everyman" $99 4 Gigabyte iPhone. Just the unusual decision to sell an Apple product at Wal-Mart caught the Clarion Content off-guard. Apple has long been known for selling its products almost exclusively through its own stores. In large part because Apple has cultivated a fervent culture of control, both of product and image. This had been the Apple way since very early in the personal computer wars.

The second event we noted was similarly a move away from the culture of control. However, not by Apple, but by one of its new competitors in the cell phone industry. This competitor in the Clarion Content's view has recognized, like we and others have, that the truly revolutionary, paradigm breaking thing about the iPhone is that it is not a phone at all. It is a hand held computer. The competitor that has caught on is Google. Google has been forming an open source alliance for making cell phone software. It has already released this software, Android on a T-Mobile G1. Sales of this phone have been robust with some estimates topping 500,000 units. And the open source alliance around Android just got more powerful this week when it was joined by Telco Vodafone, equipment maker Ericsson and handset maker Sony Ericsson, huge companies, other new members of the Open Handset Alliance announced included AKM Semiconductor Inc., ARM, ASUSTek Computer Inc., Atheros Communications, Borqs, Garmin International Inc., Huawei Technologies, Omron Software Co. Ltd, Softbank Mobile Corporation, Teleca AB and Toshiba Corporation.

Both of these competing developments can only be good news for the common person, hand held computers are coming to the masses. Soon. Stay tuned.

Labels: Predictions, technology