A number of people have recently asked me about Android and Apple mobile devices. My suggestion has been to keep in mind that between now and the end of year it looks like there is going to be quite some activity in the mobile market.
This year we will see Microsoft release their Windows 7 mobile phone operating system which will run on a number of manufacturers phones. Hopefully the lack of copy and paste won't annoy people too much or they could be in trouble.
I recently read an article about Acer releasing a range of mobiles using Android which won't be tied to contracts and available at retailers. You can check out the Acer range here. I can't help feeling the use of an older version 1.6 of Android on the lower end of the range will mean you'll have to check the mobiles out very carefully. The trade-off is probably going to be in price. Check out the technical specifications carefully. I noticed except for the Stream the Acer mobiles supported only the B and G standards for Wi-Fi. This may or may not be important to some people.
In the area of tablets the iPad has the jump, but other companies are coming to the party. For example check out the Samsung Galaxy (http://galaxytab.samsungmobile.com/) which is a 7" tablet. Very impressive. It has all the features of the iPad and then some. I did notice Samsung needs to bump up the spec for the camera though.
In the future we'll also see HP bring out mobiles and tablets using their WebOS operating system (originally by Palm). I sell quite a bit of HP equipment and my first pocket PCs were Compaq/HP, but I just wonder how well they'll do. I often sell HP computers with the Windows operating system, but I'd have to have very good reasons to consider WebOS,
Yes we are in for interesting times. I love gadgets and it will be very hard to resist. But in the end I like to get value from a gadget. The good thing for the moment is Apple is a pretty safe bet. You know what you're getting and you know they'll be around. But even the Apple 3G iPhone I saw some people buy on contract at the start of this year, can't take advantage of multi-tasking so mobiles do age very quickly. The market can change very quickly. If the Samsung Galaxy was available in Australia and cost the same as the entry level iPad, I'd seriously consider it over an iPad.
Yes we are indeed heading for interesting times in the mobile gadget market.
Kelvin Eldridge
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