So what will be in this year’s Christmas stocking?

We now have all the technology contenders lined up the Christmas shelves, sometimes side by side and sometime under an exclusive umbrella. The Kindle Fire has landed in the UK alongside the Nook, Apple have released, what they said they would never do – a smaller iPad, Microsoft bumble along as ever trying to play catch-up and Samsung continue to get the sales. Now even the children have their own LeapPad 2, a child-friendly tablet computer, or the alternative robust looking Kurio tablet.

Watch any group of people, on trains, buses, in concerts, or just walking the streets and you will see the apparent techno zombies with ear jacks, their dexterous thumbs and fingers tapping out messages and mail and others reading not books and magazines, but their latest Facebook updates.

There will always be the traditional gifts, toys, books, games and even that unwanted pair of socks, or present you save to pass on to someone else next year. But technology is fast becoming the safe buy.

So what technology would be top of your letter to Santa and how will you use it and how will it impact you and those around you? Alternatively what technology would you like to give as a gift and why?

Many will be driven to buy a tablet for their children, or even their loved ones. It may be more than the price of the traditional impulse, or last chance buy, but as it becomes that safe bet buy for those with often little imagination, and also often oblivious to the potential implications.

It is an interesting thought that many families will be split up this Christmas, not by physical distance, but will be in the same house, but separated by technology and the desire to watch, listen, read or play by themselves. As a child we always wanted to watch, or play something else – we now can.  A somewhat striking study by Pearson, claims that pupils aged 11 and under now spent three times as long “on screen” as they do buried in a book. Some one in six parents admit that they never read to their children before bedtime and a third share a book no more than once a week.  

So the impact of the new technology may be connecting people over social networks, but at the same time potentially alienating them in their immediate social environment. That present you think is going to make someone very happy, may make this Christmas very different for the family and close friends.

Google Android Is Number 1

According to research firm Canalys, Google Android is now the No.1 mobile operating system in the world,.

The claim is made in a new report from Canalys and states that 32.9 million Android-based phones shipped worldwide in the fourth quarter. That is greater than the 31 million Symbian-based phones that shipped over the same period. The rise in take up of Android is breathtaking with a growth from just 9% to 33% in year on year figures!
Symbian has dropped from 44.4% to 30.6% market share, whilst Apple achieved 16.2 million or 16% share and in forth place RIM 14.6 million and 14.4% share.

Meanwhile Microsoft has clearly lost what ground it had and only achieved 3.1million compared with 3.9m in Q4 2009. Its also worth noting that some 2 million of these were Windows Phone 7 OS which clearly indicates that it isn’t making the impact they desired and a third of shipments were still on the old Windows Mobile OS.

Not only is this the first time Symbian has been overtaken but it seriously questions where Nokia are going and whether they are losing their grip of this new smartphone market. It also shows the brilliant strategy adopted by Google to focus on the system and not try to create a one stop environment. It reminds us of that killer move Microsoft made against Mac way back when Windows was accepted by all the manufacturers and Mac was let by itself.

Google first unveiled Android in late 2007 and was widely accepted by carriers and manufacturers alike. Google are currently working on 3.0 version of the Android platform, which is being configured specifically to run on touchscreen tablet computers. They again have chosen an inclusive approach.

This is not an advert, it's a Legend

When you watch the video of HTC’ s Legend and couple this with its availability in April and the experience we have had on the forerunner HTC Hero we know that iPhone is not having a clear run any more.

The HTC running Android 2.1 is a serious contender but coupled with the new features of the Legend and we ask the question why have an iPhone? We have full Skype for free on 3 plus premium Spotify as good a range of apps from the Android store and with the Legend’s OLED screen.

Another major plus is that it will support Flash which certainly is a step in the right direction over others who are in denial.

To see what we are talking about watch the video at T3.

As We Await Apple

So as the world awaits Apple’s next announcements on Monday and the undoubted media blitz that will follow we have taken a quick look at some of the others vying for space in this crowded market.

Palm Pre
The Pre has made its long awaited entrance and now its down to the consumers to decide whether it lives up to the hype or becomes just another also ran. The webOS, Palm's new operating system enables concurrent applications open at once. You simply organized the apps like a row of cards and you flick the screen to switch between them. WebOS will also notify you of events that need your attention, no matter which application you're in. Again, making the iPhone look cumbersome and others just clumsy and slow. The Pre’s webOS aggregates contacts and calendar items from multiple sources, like Google, corporate Exchange servers, and can even insert your friends' Facebook photos into your contacts list. This obviously wins over the iPhone’s in many ways but is it enough to make consumers buy or even switch allegiance? Will we get iphone app overload and will the Pre give us the apps that are clearly driving this market?

Whether you get a Pre or not, its has clearly raised the bar on the software will leave its mark on the phones you buy in the future.

LG
We have long awaited LG GD910 mobile watch will be hitting the UK in July but unfortunately only being available via Orange and with a £1000 price tag. The price will almost certainly put off many from being James Bond but will it become a designer status symbol for chavs or merely a nice product at the wrong price? As previously reported it has a 1.4 inch touchscreen, looks good being only 14mm thick, has 7.2Mbps HSDPA, voice recognition, text to speech capability, Bluetooth, MP3 player and tells the time too.

HTC
HTC are about to unveil its third Andriod mobile and rumours suggest the announcement will be on June 24th . The HTC Hero is expected to launch in two models, one with touchscreen only and one packing a QWERTY keyboard and so offering appeal to all. With Google’s arsenal of potential opportunities and its cross platform design, the Andriod phones are certainly ones to watch.

ACER
Acer’s new Tempo F900 smartphone arrival to the UK appears imminent. First shown in Barcelona in February the device looks set to have a £429 price tag. It features a 3.8 inch VGA screen, Internet Explorer 6, with JavaScript and Adobe Flash Lite, and high-speed HSDPA. Acer has clearly stated it wants to be a smartphone player and have adopted Acer 2.0 user interface to aid navigation and ‘desktop’ customisation, in addition to Google Search, Google Maps and YouTube. Acer is not alone in the move from netbook to mobile and could bring some interesting user friendly aspects to the table.

INQ
UK based INQ is to launch a Twitter phone which it claims will be the first mass-market phone to have a client for the social networking phenomenon built-in. It will use the internet to send and receive tweets, rather than text messages. The question is what is so special and surely everyone else can easily follow. Like Skype you don’t buy a device just make it easy to twitter or do you?

The Devices are a Changin

When the economy and consumer spending slows down then hard choices usually follow. We all may want the biggest and most expensive, but when given a reality check, common sense often prevails. PC PRO today reports that the shift to spending on netbooks is continuing apace and that they now account for three out of ten consumer laptop sales in Europe.3.6 million netbooks were sold in Europe in the last quarter of 2008 and Western Europe accounted for more than 80% of overall European sales. Acer with 30.3% and Asus with 28% dominate the market with the likes of HP. Dell and Samsung collectively only having some 17.9%. Clearly consumer are deterred by ‘cheaper’ and newer brands and the ‘old guard is slowly changin’.

What is interesting is that the demand todate has been predominantly consumer driven but as notebook specifications improve, 3G is integrated, the screen size increases to 10” and times gets tighter it is easy to envisage notebooks exploding onto the business sector.

Asus has already stated that it will have a Eee PC with touchscreen running on Windows 7 by the summer. As we have written many times it is now easy to predict that the consumer media battleground will be between the notebook and smartphone. The laptop will survive but will be the heavy duty engine and its portability become less appealing. Dedicated media players such as games will have to fight on the enriched experience ticket and ereaders will suffer as they become marginalised and become increasingly one dimensional, eink constrained and neither one think or the other. The other big threat to the ereaders is that you can do what they do on every other device but they can’t do what ever other device does.

Worth a Visit

The New York Times today covered the Las Vegas CTIA Wireless 2008 show and showed us some of the latest phones on offer.

We would not wish to say more than recommend the article http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/technology/04phone.html?th&emc=th where you can also link to see video of three of the latest phones at the show.

Anyone who still believes that there will be dedicated reading devices take note. The technology world is shrinking and converging fast.

Text Amazon

Publishers Weekly in their article ‘Amazon Lets Readers Shop via Text Message’ alert us to the latest way Amazon want to capture sales, their new TextBuyIt service. The service does what it says on the can and lets customers find and buy all items from Amazon via cellphones. A customer must have already set up an Amazon account to use this new Amazon.com service but once achieved can buy books, electrical goods and any stocked product.

In effect it now enables customers to use any mobile device to shop and buy from Amazon.com, at anytime, anywhere via a select number of major US mobile service providers.

We applaud the way Amazon have laid out the instructions and FAQs on the service and simplified it such that the consumer knows exactly what to do. See for yourselves at TextBuyIt.

The questions are whether people want to buy this way and what they will buy off the service? The text users may well see it as a natural extension of their thumbs and welcome the opportunity to buy this way. We would suggest that this works best where the consumer knows exactly what they want and either trust Amazon pricing or knows the price point to buy at. It may not so be so efficient where the consumer wants to compare or is unsure about the price points. Therefore if you know the book you want and the price you want to pay and you are a text convert and have an Amazon account it may appeal. However with the speed at which broadband mobile services are rolling out, then it makes sense to search, select and compare using mobile web services either via a cell or laptop.

First the iPhone now the gPhone

As mobile phones become more sophisticated and mobile network speeds faster and Wi-Fi more pervasive it is clear that the computer connection device is the mobile. Over 20% of UK mobile subscribers are expected to have access to the mobile internet at broadband speeds by the end of this year. This opens up new wars which are not so much about carriers but about content.

Rumours are now spreading that Google is aiming to enter the race and launch a “Google phone” especially tailored to its services and aptly nicknamed the “Gphone” which will ensure its own products such as its search engine, e-mail and Google Maps are showcased. Importantly the failure of 3G services on mobile phones and a lack of “web friendly” handsets has held back the market for mobile advertising.

A Google-branded phone could go head-to-head with Apple’s iPhone, which is set to be launched in the UK before Christmas. It is easy to see Yahoo, Microsoft, eBay all wanting a bigger slice or to protect their slice of this market. Google has already brokered deals with mobile phone companies, including Vodafone, the British operator and its search engine also comes preloaded on handsets made by Samsung and LG. But partnering may not be enough and may not give Google the control it desires. We must also be aware that Google may not wish to have their applications running under Microsoft’s mobile operating system or Apple’s iPhone.

Mad4Mobiles claims to have uncovered a Google patent for a mobile application that filters and adapts your searches based on where you are, what time of day it is, and what you’ve previously search for. For example it found you a restruant in the early evening and when you turned your phone on again an hour later at 10pm, Google would know you wanted bars near the restaurant. At 11pm Google again predicts you need a list of local taxi firms. Too much information and scary but its just a case of joining the dots.

Mobiles continue to offer Digital Content

That ubiquitous mobile continues to attract different publishers as they experiment with digital delivery. Hundreds of travel books and maps on European cities are to be preloaded onto Motorola phones. The books from Rough Guides are complimented by maps from ViaMichelin and packed as Rough Guides Mobile by Creative Software Ltd.

Swedish mobile users will now be able to enjoy over 100 HarperCollins English language audiobooks via service provider BOKiLUR. Users will get 2 minutes of free sample and then purchase a title for around 15 euros. The download is streamed to the phone and thereby obviates downloading to a pC. The system if successful will be rolled out to a number of other European Countries in the next 12 months.