Despite predictions to the contrary, Apple did not announce a cheaper, mass market version of the iPhone today. Instead, it announced an upgraded iPhone 4 called the iPhone 4S. It’s the same on the outside, but with all new insides.

However, there are more affordable iPhones now on the market: the old ones. Apple says it’s keeping the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 around. Not only that, it’s dropping their prices. Why would Apple keep these aging devices alive? Simple. To battle Android, Symbian, RIM and Windows Phone – especially in emerging markets.

According to today’s announcement, the iPhone 3GS is now free with a contract. The iPhone 4 has been reduced to $99. While the new lower prices are based on 2-year agreements with mobile carriers, the fact that the phones are not being killed off entirely is important.

These are the “new” cheaper, mass market iPhones.

Apple didn’t specify where these discounted devices would be sold, only noting that the iPhone 4S would be available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, U.K., France, Germany and Japan. It would not be surprising to see these older models used as Apple’s inroads into emerging markets, though.

Here’s why:

More people are buying Android smartphones than iPhones. That fact is not in dispute.

According to recent estimates from comScore, Android’s U.S. market share is 41.8% to Apple’s 27%. In Europe, where Symbian still reigns, it’s 22.3% for Android vs. 20.3% for iPhone. Worldwide, some analysts now peg Android as having nearly 50% of the smartphone market.

What iPhone lacks in volume, though, it makes up for in profit, capturing two-thirds of available mobile phone profits in Q2 2011. One could even argue that Apple does not need to provide a low-cost iPhone – it was doing just fine without one, thank you very much.

For Apple, however, not having a presence in emerging markets was a challenge it needed to address. Take for example, India – the second largest telecom market after China. According to a recent Bloomberg report, Apple accounted for just 2.6% of India’s smartphone shipments in a market with 602 million subscribers. That’s fewer devices than it shipped to Norway, Belgium or Israel.

Nokia dominates the Indian market, with 46% of shipments in Q2. Even struggling handset maker RIM reached 15% in shipments there. And Samsung, who plays the field with bada, Android and Windows Phone devices, reached 21% (source: IDC). Bloomberg cites issues with iPhone availability, advertising and the Indian carriers, the latter having just started to launch their 3G networks this year. (Without 3G, much of what the iPhone could do, it only does well when Wi-Fi is available.) Price, too, is an obvious concern.

Meanwhile, in China, the iPhone is expensive, sometimes even costing more than it does in the U.S. That’s ironic, given China’s role in iPhone manufacturing and assembly. It’s also only available through the country’s second-largest carrier, China Unicom. However, reports from July stated that Apple CEO Tim Cook (then COO) was looking to bring the iPhone to China’s largest carrier, China Mobile, which has 600 million subscribers compared with China Unicom’s 200 million.

Despite the technical challenges of launching in these regions, not to mention the competition from name-brand competitors and knockoffs alike, Apple knows it can not continue to ignore the need to compete in these markets. China and India, of all the emerging markets, are important due to their sheer size – after all, Apple doesn’t generate all its income from device sales. Failing to capture market share in these regions is simply a missed opportunity to generate revenue.

Even Cook admitted during Apple’s most recent earnings call China’s importance to Apple’s growth in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as its importance to the company’s overall results. According to Cook, iPhone sales in China were a “key driver” of Apple’s $8.8 billion in revenue for the quarter. And Chinese Apple stores have the highest traffic (4x the traffic as their American counterparts) and highest revenue of any Apple stores in the world.

Today, during the Apple keynote, Cook talked about the opening of two new retail stores in Asia this past week: Hong Kong and Shanghai. The Shanghai store, now the largest in Asia, saw 100,000 visitors on its opening weekend. For comparison purposes, it took the L.A. store a month to hit that same number.

So while a “cheaper” iPhone in these markets would mean lower margins on Apple hardware, the incredible size of the markets means there’s an opportunity to make up for that loss through device sales potential.

Competitors Android, RIM, Nokia and Windows Phone often battle iPhone on price, as their app ecosystems and content businesses (e.g., Zune is no iTunes, Google Music doesn’t even sell songs) are still lacking in comparison to Apple’s. With price out of the equation, Apple’s growth potential has just been radically changed.

In other words, with the new iPhone 4S, Apple continues to cater to the high-end crowd who would have upgraded anyway. With the iPhone 4 and 3GS, Apple goes after the market that wanted a smartphone of any kind, as long as it was affordable. It goes after those who wanted the iPhone, but didn’t have the money.

That said, a discounted iPhone alone may not be enough for Apple to take the market share lead in smartphones, given that there hundreds of Android devices vs. just these three iPhone models. It stands to reason, though, it will at least make a dent in Android’s seemingly unstoppable market share growth.

Oh, and the new Sprint iPhone won’t hurt either.

Image credits: asymco, Apple

If you’re one of those folks who doesn’t need the latest and greatest, it may tickle your fancy to know that Best Buy is giving away the iPhone 3GS. The sale will only last through today, and is only available to customers signing a new two-year contract with AT&T or renewing their contract.

The iPhone 3GS has been going for $50 on-contract from AT&T for a while, but getting an iPhone for free is pretty rare indeed. Then again, Best Buy has to make some room for another very special Apple product that’s on its way. Can anyone guess what that might be?

Anyways, the 3GS has already passed its second birthday (that’s basically a centennial in phone years). With a two-year agreement, you’ll be toting around a phone made in 2009 around the same time that the iPhone 7 comes out. By then, who knows the extent to which your 3GS specs will be out-dated.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings got up on stage right after Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the WWDC 2010 conference, which we’re liveblogging here. Guess why he was there: there’s a free Netflix app for iPhone on the way, and it’s coming this Summer.

It isn’t much of a surprise. I mean, Netflix already has an (amazing) iPad app, and it started surveying interest for an iPhone app early March 2010, while rumors of its impending launch have been swirling for much longer.

Judging from MobileCrunch writer Greg Kumparak’s comments on the liveblog, the features Hastings mentioned on stage mirror that of the iPad app: full catalog, Instant Queue access, and movies will start playing where you stopped watching even if it was on any other platform than the iPhone OS.

Update: Engadget has a screenshot:

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, this video demo of the ScanBizCards application must be worth a couple posts from me here on MobileCrunch:

There are other business card scanning solutions available for a multitude of platforms. I only have an iPhone 3G, so I can’t test the scanning power of ScanBizCards myself, but the ability to integrate the business card information with your phone’s address book plus the “send introduction” feature plus the “Connect on LinkedIn” feature look to me like pretty useful additions. ScanBizCards would make receiving a business card something that’s actually worthwhile.

ScanBizCards is a two-man operation here in the U.S. of A. They’re using the Tesseract OCR code as the core of their recognition system, though I’m told they’ve made a number of important modifications before, during, and after Tesseract:

• Before: image processing, thresholding – resulting in a binary image we prepare instead of letting Tesseract do it
• Within: we applied a number of fixes with Tesseract
• After: we have a long list of post-OCR corrections of various kinds, both at the level of individual characters, handling of spaces and dictionary-type corrections

An update to ScanBizCards — due in the very near future — will introduce online synchronization and backup of your business card collection. The demo I saw allows for online editing of card data from within your browser, and automatic synchronization with the card collection stored in your phone. It’s expected to be a premium subscription service, and while pricing hasn’t been nailed down, it doesn’t sound like it’ll be too much.

So, you want a copy? I have a couple promo codes for ScanBizCards to give away. To enter, simply leave a comment! We’ll pick random winners Friday afternoon. And remember, although ScanBizCards will execute on an iPhone 3G, you can only actually scan cards on an iPhone 3GS.

Before you start scrambling for your phone, laptop and data cable, just relax for a second. The latest update to the iPhone software, version 3.1.3, is a minor one. A quick glance at the changelog shows that the update will improve accuracy on the reported battery level on the 3GS, which is a huge help because we’ve sometimes seen it go from 20% to dead in just seconds. The launching of third-party apps should no longer lead to any weird crashes and the Japanese Kana keyboard is fixed. Happy downloading!

To be honest, I don’t really care which is the better smartphone (or super-duper phone): the iPhone 3GS, the Motorola Droid, HTC’s Droid Eris, Google’s Nexus One, Nokia’s N900 or the Palm Pre.

It’s just great to witness this seemingly never-ending advancements in mobile technology, both on a hardware and software level, and to see increased competition drive innovation at such rapid pace. Just compare the market today to five years ago, and you can’t help but be amazed by how far we’ve come – I still remember my epic struggles to get my previous phone (HTC S710 with Windows Mobile) to do half of what I really wanted it to.

In short: if all phone manufacturers keep on pumping out better phones, I’m a happy camper (for the record: I’m still very pleased with my iPhone 3GS as my primary device).

But comparisons will be comparisons, and MOTO Development Group this morning announced the results of its DIY touchscreen analysis, based on some touchy testing of the capacitive screens of the Nexus One, the iPhone, the Motorola Droid and HTC’s Droid Eris.

MOTO has a lot of experience developing products that use capacitive touch, and its team members have put their fingers on a good number of smartphones over the past few years. After using DIY techniques to test touchscreen performance (see video below) in combination with more sophisticated testing tools, MOTO has concluded that not all touch-screens are created equal. And that the iPhone’s screen performs slightly better than that of its rivals.

Below is a visualization of the test results, based on MOTO’s drawing of straight diagonal lines across the screen using both light and medium pressure of the fingers. And in its own words why the iPhone has a slight edge over the Nexus One, Droid and Droid Eris:

The iPhone’s touch sensor showed the most linear tracking with the least amount of stair-stepping. The Droid Eris and Nexus One tied for second with only faint wiggling – but actually performed best at the edge of the screen. Last in the line-up was the Motorola Droid, which demonstrated significant wavy artifacts or “stair-stepping.”

Are you happy with your smartphone’s touchscreen performance?

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8569827&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=c9ff23&fullscreen=1

Then there are iPhone applications like Skype, eBuddy and Nimbuzz that allow you to call and/or IM your friends over the Internet waves, sans extra carrier charges.

Here’s another fun one to add to the mix: Blipr (iTunes link).

When you install the free app, you get a unique BliprID that you can share with your friends. Using that ID, your iPhone-carrying friends can add you to their contact list once they’ve downloaded and installed the software program from the App Store too. Once connected, you can use the tool to send messages to each other, with or without added sound bites.

Since it supports push notifications natively, you’ll soon find that Blipr’s a much more enjoyable – and cheaper – way of communicating with your buddies than sending a text message that cannot include fart, animal, burp sounds or other short audio snippets. The tool also runs in the background, so once turned on you can do anything you want and still receive Blipr messages on your iPhone.

Blipr also supports EMOJI icons if you have them enabled on your device. And finally, you can check the history of your conversations much like you can with text messages, and replay the sounds that came with them.

The small company behind the app, Return7, aims to generate revenue from the app by offering paid sound packs (e.g. Christmas themed audio bites) straight from the app.

Sadly for them, they’ve already jammed so many sounds (over 100) into the free app that there’s little reason for anyone to pay for more.

(Via Orli)

Big caveat for starters: the camera on the iPhone 3GS is located on the back, which is handy for recording videos of people and locations in front of you but of course makes it impossible for you to point the camera at your own face while still being able to see the screen (unlike Nokia N Series phones for instance).

Thus, the latest version of fring’s iPhone app may well integrate video calling, but it’s only for incoming streams – which the startup acknowledges in the press release.

Its application for selected Nokia Symbian S60 devices, however, does two-way video calling.

The tool is designed to work for video calls between both fring and Skype contacts, but the new feature most definitely failed to deliver in my own personal experience at first. After trying to set up video calls both with a friend on Skype and someone from the company over fring, I found that calls were dropped automatically after only half a second. Two calls and multiple chat sessions with fring’s engineering team later, we found that – while my settings are hardly exotic – the configuration of my WiFi access point prevented me from handling incoming video calls using the fring application.

The company swiftly solved the problem of the blocked connection, and after rebooting my access point I successfully accepted an incoming video call from a fring engineer who was using his Nokia N97 camera and phone. It – finally – worked like a charm.

Do you have an iPhone, iPod Touch and are you near a WiFi access point, or do you have one of the supported Nokia devices, which also works over 3G?

Give it a whirl (iTunes link) and let us know if it works for you.

Internet commerce juggernaut eBay is unveiling a brand new iPhone application dubbed Deals today, alongside an upgraded version of its shopping app for the iPhone and iPod Touch platform and an enhanced mobile website. And there’s a good reason for eBay to bolster its mobile offering: the company says its mobile GMV (value of goods sold) via its iPhone app and mobile website (m.ebay.com) is on track to top half a billion dollars by the end of this year.

Impressive number, and that’s not the end of the story. eBay also shared that its mobile GMV is growing at a double-digit rate month-over-month, and that approximately half of its 750,000 unique mobile users per month are situated outside the United States. Another interesting tidbit: eBay says 1 item is purchased every 2 seconds through its mobile offering.

Earlier this year, eBay CEO John Donahoe told a conference audience that the value of goods sold through the eBay iPhone app alone would exceed $400 million, and that an upgraded version of the app was imminent. That updated app should now be available, and it gained a little brother, too.

Version 1.5 of the eBay iPhone application (iTunes link), which the company says has been downloaded 5 million times to date, should now be live on the App Store – in 8 languages and in 77 countries. It boasts a streamlined interface that lets buyers and sellers manage their eBay activity and accounts directly from their iPhone devices, Daily Deal access, social media and e-mail sharing options (new), ‘Buy It Now’ capabilities, push notification alerts (also new) and a more powerful integration with PayPal.

The e-commerce giant is today also debuting a new app, called Deals (iTunes link – US store only), that basically gives iPhone and iPod Touch users a way to access the seemingly never-ending stream of bargains among hundreds of millions eBay listings. The app has built-in integration with social networks like Facebook and Twitter, making it easier for buyers to share their shopping activity with other and even build consensus around deals with their friends. Nice touch: you can shake your device to refresh the deals on display.

eBay has released the new app just in time for its ’12 Days Of Deals’ program, that will commence this Friday, November 27.

Anyone still believe e-commerce via mobile isn’t worth the effort?

You can imagine that my parents pretty much thought I was an alcoholic in high school since twice a week like clockwork I called home at 11:45 pm to let them know I was too drunk to drive home and would be staying the night at wherever. Most of the time I wasn’t actually drinking, but who wants to go home at midnight? One time I remember calling home from Las Vegas (a four hour drive from Huntington Beach where I lived) to let them know I had had a couple of beers and would be staying at my friend John’s house down the street until morning (oh, right, like there’s anything you can do about it now, Mom).

Today things are different, though. And seeing iPhone apps like iCurfew just makes me shudder. Kids are still going to stay out late and not tell their parents what they’re up to. They just have to get way more creative about it, I guess. Because iCurfew tells your parents exactly where you’ve been and where you are now. You can send messages back and forth along with a handy Google map showing where the little troublemaker is right at that moment (probably outside a 7-11, trying to get someone to buy them beer).

Any kid worth his salt will try to figure out a way around this. My thought is to pay off someone to hold onto your phone and hang out at the movie theater messaging nice things to your parents while you are off doing God knows what. But I’m sure some enterprising young hacker to be can come up with a much more elegant solution.

But they better hurry, because adding a breathalyzer to this thing is probably next.

In making our decisions, we looked at these phones from the standpoint of the consumer. Thus, developer struggles, business security, and other such problems were not taken into account. Instead, functionality, price, and the overall usefulness of various smartphones made up the criteria which we adhered to during our reviews. These phones can be found on a multitude of carriers, operating systems, and continents.

Feel free to comment below on the merits of this list of the best smart phones currently available.

iPhone 3GS

You know you’re on top when phone manufacturers are constantly struggling to produce an “iPhone killer”. The iPhone 3GS boasts a massive App Store (with nearly 100,000 apps now), the largest developer base, and is simply put, the best phone on the market.

Status: Launched June 19th, 2009 on ATT
Screen: 3.5-inch 480 x 320-pixel resolution at 163 ppi widescreen Multi-Touch display
Dimensions: 115.5 x 62.1 x 12.3 mm; 135 grams
Camera: 3 megapixels w/ AutoFocus, No flash
Battery: 1150 mAh Li-Ion
Standby Time: 300 hours
Talk Time: Up to 12 hours on 2G; Up to 5 hours on 3G
Processor: Samsung S5PC100; 600 MHz
Internal/External Memory: 16GB or 32GB
Extras: 3.5mm Headset jack, accelerometer, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS enabled
Operating System: iPhone OS
Price: $199 for 16 GB; $299 for 32GB

Motorola Droid

If any phone is going to challenge the iPhone’s supremacy, it will be the Verizon Droid. The Droid is on a superior network than the iPhone, and will be running Android 2.0 which has a much improved user interface over previous versions of Android.

Status: Rumored to be announced October 28th; Verizon Wireless.
Screen: 3.7-inch/480×854 Full Touchscreen with Full QWERTY Slider
Dimensions: 60 x 115.8 x 13.7 mm; 169 grams
Camera: 5.0 Megapixels with AutoFocus
Battery: Li-ion 1400mAh
Standby Time: 450 Hours
Talk Time:7 Hours
Processor: Texas Instruments OMAP 3430 processor; 600MHz
Internal/External Memory: 512MB Flash, 256MB RAM/MicroSD (16GB capacity)
Extras: 3.5mm Headset jack, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS enabled
Operating System: Android 2.0
Price: Unknown

Palm Pre

The Palm Pre signaled the resurrection of Palm. It is well-designed, and has a very promising OS, which if tweaked and improved slightly, can challenge any OS on the market.

Status: Available June 6th on Sprint. Available October 13 in Germany and October 16 in UK and Ireland
Screen: 3.1-inch touch screen with 24-bit color 320×480 resolution HVGA display and full QWERTY keyboard
Dimensions: 100.5 x 59.5 x 16.95 mm; 135 grams
Camera: 3 megapixel camera with LED flash and AutoFocus
Battery: 1150 mAh
Standby Time: 250 Hours
Talk Time: 5 Hours
Processor: Texas Instruments OMAP 3430 processor; 600MHz
Internal/External Memory: 8 GB
Extras: 3.5mm Headset jack, accelerometer, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS enabled
Operating System: Palm webOS
Price: $149.99

HTC Hero/T-Mobile G2 Touch/Sprint HTC Hero

The inclusion of HTC Sense makes the Hero the best Android phone currently on the market. It is fast, stylish, and easy to use.

Status: HTC Hero Launched July 24th for Orange UK. T-Mobile G2 Touch Launched July 29th.
Screen: 3.2-inch/ 320×480 HVGA resolution; Full Touchscreen/TFT-LCD touch-sensitive screen
Dimensions: 112 x 56.2 x 14.35 mm ; 135 grams
Camera: 5 Megapixels with AutoFocus
Battery: 1350 mAh Lithium-ion battery
Standby Time: Up to 750 hours for WCDMA, Up to 440 hours for GSM
Talk Time:Up to 420 minutes for WCDMA, Up to 470 minutes for GSM
Processor: Qualcomm® MSM7200A™, 528 MHz
Internal/External Memory:288MB/MicroSD 2.0
Extras: 3.5mm Headset jack, Wi-Fi, accelerometer, Bluetooth and GPS enabled
Operating System: Android
Price: $179.99

BlackBerry Bold

The BlackBerry Bold is RIM’s crowning achievement thus far and the impending Bold 9700 should see widespread adoption.

Status: Available on AT&T; Bold 9700 available November 2nd, 2009
Screen: 2.6 inch Half VGA resolution Dispay Screen; 480 x 320 pixels; 65,000 colors
Dimensions: 114 x 66 x 15; 136 grams
Camera: 2.0 MP w/ AutoFocus
Battery: Li – Ion, 1500 mAh
Standby Time: 324 hours
Talk Time: 4.5 hours
Processor: 624 MHz
Internal/External Memory: 1 GB
Extras: 3.5mm Headset jack, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS capable with extended ephemeris
Operating System: BlackBerry OS
Price: $199.99

HTC Magic/T-Mobile MyTouch 3G

The MyTouch 3G is an easy to use, stylish Android phone. The absence of a standard 3.5mm headset jack is a bit of a disappointment, but otherwise this phone is quite powerful and useful. Furthermore, Mike quit the iPhone for the MyTouch, and that has to mean something.

Status: HTC Magic Launched May 1, 2009 and July 10th, 2009 in Japan; MyTouch 3G launched July 8, 2009. Available through T-Mobile, Vodafone, and Docomo
Screen:3.2″ /320 x 480 HVGA Touchscreen/TFT, TFD, LCD 262k
Dimensions: 113 x 55 x 13 mm; 118.5 grams
Camera: 3.2 Megapixels with AutoFocus (MyTouch has a 5MP camera)
Battery: 1340 mAh Lithium-ion battery
Standby Time: 420 hours
Talk Time: 7.5 Hours
Processor: Qualcomm® MSM7201a™, 528 MHz
Internal/External Memory:192/288 MB (Underclocked)/ MicroSD up to 32GB
Extras: HTC ExtUSB Headset Jack, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS enabled
Operating System: Android
Price: $99.99 (T-Mobile MyTouch $149.99)

BlackBerry Storm 2

The BlackBerry Storm 2, while an improvement over its predecessor, still lacks the “wow” factor necessary to push it higher up on this list.

Status: Available on Verizon Wireless October 28th, 2009
Screen: 3.25 inch 360 x 480 pixel touchscreen; 65k colors
Dimensions: 112.5 x 62.2 x 13.9 mm; 160 grams
Camera: 3.2 Megapixels w/ LED flash and AutoFocus
Battery: 1400 mAh Li-Ion
Standby Time: 270 hours
Talk Time: 5.5 hours
Processor: 528 MHz Qualcomm processor
Internal/External Memory: 2 GB/16 GB microSD
Extras: 3.5 mm headset, GPS, bluetooth, and wi-fi enabled
Operating System: BlackBerry OS
Price: $179.99

BlackBerry Tour

Our biggest qualm with the BlackBerry Tour is its lack of Wi-Fi. Other than that however, the Tour is a great phone if you’re a chronic email user or if you text message a lot.

Status: Available on July 12, 2009 through Verizon and Sprint.
Screen: 2.4 inch 480×360 pixel display screen; 65,000 colors
Dimensions: 112 x 62 x 14.2 mm; 130 grams
Camera: 3.2 Megapixels with AutoFocus
Battery: 1400 mAHr removable/rechargeable cryptographic lithium cell
Standby Time: 336 Hours
Talk Time: 5 Hours
Processor: 528 MHz Qualcomm processor
Internal/External Memory: 256 MB RAM
Extras: 3.5mm Headset jack, Bluetooth and GPS enabled. No Wi-Fi nor accelerometer
Operating System: BlackBerry OS
Price: $149.99

Nokia E71x

The Nokia E71x is a sleek and stylish phone, but like the Magic, lacks a 3.5mm headset jack. Nonetheless, this phone is just right for those on a budget, given its $99.99 price tag.

Status: Available on AT&T
Screen: 2.4″ LCD (Color TFT/TFD) display screen; 320 x 240 pixels (QVGA); 16.7 million (24-bit)
Dimensions:114 x 57 x 10 mm; 126g
Camera: 3.2MP w/ Autofocus and Flash
Battery: BP-4L 1500 mAh Li-Po standard battery
Standby Time: 480 hours
Talk Time: 4.5 hours
Processor: ARM 11, 369 MHz
Internal/External Memory: 110MB/ MicroSD
Extras: 2.5mm Headset jack, bluetooth, wi-fi, and GPS enabled
Operating System: Symbian OS
Price: $99.00

The free app (iTunes link) has been available on the App Store since the beginning of this month, but surprisingly there hasn’t been a lot of coverage about it. Even despite this excellent video about it (embedded below).

The software program allows you to select flashy looking sneakers that were custom designed by others and purchase them straight away, but there’s a lot more to it than that. For instance, you can dive into your photo library and select any image, after which the NIKEiD iPhone app will automatically detect which colors are in them and let you choose two for your own custom shoe. Or you can just use the Color Picker to select two colors you like.

Evidently, you can filter the results even more based on your specific needs (e.g. only shoes for men, unisex basketball clothing, etc.). Using the My Locker feature you can also save your favorite designs and access those you’ve customized on the NIKEiD website. Once you’ve selected a custom design you like, you can shake your iPhone to shuffle the colors, but you also get some options to genuinely personalize sneakers with your name, a custom logo or whatever you like.

Did I mention you can buy designs straight from the app?

Kudos, Nike, kudos.

(Via DutchCowboys)

Yes, Apple views the smartphone market as still being behind the first phone they released over two years ago. “We’ve moved beyond that,” Cook noted.

Certainly, compared to some smartphones out there, the first iPhone still compares very well. The iPhone 3G compares even better — as we’ve written before, it’s kind of like James Bond, while a lot of others at the same price are Joe Schmoe. But to say the original iPhone is ahead of phones like the Palm Pre and the myTouch 3G seems a bit disingenuous.

That said, the iPhone 3GS is, in my view, still absolutely ahead of the competiton, including the aforementioned phones. By many accounts, the upcoming Verizon Droid phone could be first real challenger to the current leading iPhone. Verizon obviously feels the same way, given its advertising campaign.

Being obsessed with consuming as much news – mostly technology related, of course – as humanly possible in the all too short span of any given day comes with the territory of working for TechCrunch, but I’ve always been a fan of obtaining as much information as fast as I could.

You could say my ever-growing habit of trying to consume as much news in my waking hours as I can is more of a natural cause for my employment in the fast-paced tech blogging scene than it is a result.

It also means I feel very disconnected when I’m not near a computer or mobile phone I can use to tap the Internet for the never-ending stream of news that gets pumped onto the wires.

(Reading Wisdom 2.0 didn’t help – I barely found time to turn the pages)

I used to have a HTC phone (OS: Windows Mobile 6) for when I was on the go, which offered such a miserable browsing experience compared to the iPhone 3GS I own now that I’m genuinely thankful every single day for the fact that technology evolves so fast and the average consumer has so much choice these days.

Before I digress too much: there are a number of iPhone apps that I use to (try and) stay on top of the news flow, like a mobile RSS reader and apps from major publishers like the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, Bloomberg etc. But then there are a couple of iPhone applications built by independent programmers that provide even more news consumption bliss, and there are three that I wanted to highlight today.

The first comes from BNO News, the tiny but incredibly efficient media organization behind the popular @BreakingNews Twitter account that gets followed by some 1,320,000 people right now. The company’s ‘breaking news’ iPhone application (iTunes link) with customized push notifications is a must-have for anyone who likes to learn about news near-instantly. PaidContent’s Rafat Ali recently gushed about BNO News and its fantastic iPhone app, saying some of the majors should step up and buy them outright. I tend to disagree: as long as they’re eating the majors’ lunch on breaking news independently, which shouldn’t they keep to their own and see what happens next?

The cost: $1.99 for the installation and a $0.99 subscription fee per month.
Worth it? No-brainer.

The second is an iPhone app that was launched not too long ago: a mobile extension of Newsy.com (iTunes link). Newsy caters perfectly to people like me, who are keen on getting news fed to them in snack-size bits of multimedia that cover the essence of what’s going on. Newsy monitors, analyzes, curates and presents the world’s news coverage through short video segments available both on the web and mobile devices. It’s great for quick news consumption on the go, but also helpful in understanding it by delivering stories as covered by media outlets from around the world.

The cost: zip.

Last but not least: Zensify’s awesome ZenNews app (iTunes link).

Its lifestreaming iPhone app was already worth installing, but ZenNews – billed as “a new breed of intelligent news analysis programs” – takes the cake as far as I’m concerned. The app allows you to discover story trends from the world’s leading news sources – bar TechCrunch – in real-time. It provides you with a visual way of sifting through the news of the day by displaying tag clouds made up of essential keywords that you can tap in order to drill down to what you’re interested in reading.

You can switch to a different news source by simply swiping to the next tag cloud, which also allows you to compare news item coverage from different sources. And if the tag clouds don’t do it for you, you can switch to a list-based, chronological overview of the news as well. In addition, you can filter certain news categories out of what gets displayed on your screen. Finally, you can favorite news stories from any source and pass articles on to your Twitter friends and by e-mail in just one tap.

The cost: nada

Any other neutral developers who’ve come up with innovative concepts around mobile news consumption (on any platform) that I should know about?

The comment section is there for you.

It was one of the main questions I had for the Dutch company, which markets an augmented reality browser, when they launched at the Mobile 2.0 Europe event in Barcelona last year. When would they be complementing their Android program with an application for the iPhone?

They said it’d come in the fall of this year, and while there have been a number of AR applications made available on the App Store in the meantime, Layar’s finally arrived a couple of hours ago and it’s worth a second look. (iTunes link)

In case the concept of augmented reality is still new to you, basically it’s the placement of a digital layer of information on top of a real-life view of the world around you, as seen through e.g. a mobile phone’s camera lens. Using augmented reality, you could be using your smartphone to glance around the main square of a city you’re visiting and get up-to-date information about nearby restaurants, ATMs, real estate offers, and more on-screen, bolted on top of what you’d be seeing if you weren’t looking through the lens.

And if you’re not familiar with the place you’re at, you can ideally place it on top of a map to help you get the right directions, and if you find for instance a sea food restaurant even fetch user reviews to check out if it’s considered to be a decent place, as well as contact information to book a table right from where you’re standing.

Layar does all that, and does it well. I used the iPhone application – which is entirely free, by the way – to find pizza places here in the Brussels region, and I was able to locate dozens of places where I could get one simply by rotating the camera around my house. If you want, you can filter the distance in between 1 and 10 kilometers to narrow your search down.

Layar also boasts its own little developer ecosystem (and even 3D support), so it has so-called ‘layars’ in place mostly made by third-party developers that you can use to enhance what you’re able to see through the camera lens using the app (e.g. for viewing Twitter contacts around you). There are two options in the menu: ‘Featured’, extra layers that were selected by the startup, and ‘Popular’, obviously based on usage. Finally, there’s an integration with Google Local Search which lets you launch searches for places you find using the ‘Reality Browser’.

Layar is great, but it’s not the only AR app in the App Store. First, there’s Mobilizy with their Wikitude browser and then we recently wrote up Robotvision, which does much of what Layar does but is powered by Bing. Gawker recently covered a few more.

All hype or game-changing? It’s still early days for augmented reality, but I’m bullish on it.

Anyone who has seen the 1997 British film of the same name will realize that such an act would certainly be more open. But will it work?

Open Apple

If there has ever been any question as to who Palm sees as its main rival in the quest for next generation smartphone domination, just look at its ranks. The company is filled with ex-Apple employees, all the way up to the top with CEO Jon Rubinstein (who was in attendance tonight), who is the man often credited for being instrumental in the creation of the iPod for Apple. And if that’s not enough, just listen to the rhetoric:

“Open, open, open, open.”

The reason Palm kept repeating that tonight is because it’s the one sure weakness it perceives in Apple’s currently dominating mobile application model. And Palm is hardly alone. Everyone from Microsoft to Google have taken subtle, and some not-so-subtle, shots at Apple’s system.

The problem with this, of course, is that Apple’s system keeps growing at an ever-increasing pace. The number of apps in the App Store (85,000) is growing at a rapid rate, while the overall downloads (2 billion) are speeding up. Rubinstein announced tonight that Palm had somewhere around 125 or 127 apps available for webOS right now. And those apps have been downloaded some 7.5 million times. It’s not exactly fair to compare the two stores since Palm’s app store is much newer. But um, those are pretty big gaps regardless of start times.

Open Web

We learned tonight what Palm believes is its solution going forward: Be more open than any other platform. And do things like utilize the web for distribution outside of its own App Catalog. Given that webOS is an entirely web-based language, this seems like it could be a smart play, and lends synergy to Palm’s overall goals for the OS.

Oddly, Palm seems to be betting on the web as the future of development more than even Google is, which has its Android platform that runs Java-coded apps.

And that’s why it was also wise of Palm to bring in two Mozilla veterans, Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer, to run its developer relations team. As anyone who has ever read Ajaxian will know, these two have been drinking that Kool-Aid for a long, long time. And now it’s their task to preach their Kool-Aid to a development community that has been drunk on native apps for the past couple of years.

And Palm is also appealing to the open source community by allowing them to develop and distribute apps for free. But when you open up your system on multiple fronts, things can get confusing. So let’s review what Palm’s new strategy (which will start in December) really is:

• If you wish to develop for webOS, you must pay a $99 yearly fee.
• But if you use code that is open-sourced, Palm will waive that $99 fee.
• If you wish to then distribute your app in Palm’s App Catalog, there will be a $50 per-application fee.
• But if you distribute via the web, you can do so for free.

So depending on how you mix and match those, development for webOS can range from free to roughly $150 a year.

But there are also rules with regard to the screening of the apps:

• If you want to distribute your app in Palm’s App Catalog, it is subject to review by Palm.
• But if you do web distribution, there is a “fast” self-certification process.

So why put your app in the store at all? Well first, unless you have your own advertising means, Palm’s store will undoubtedly be a better place for discovery on a large scale. Second, with apps that are sold in the App Catalog, Palm offers a 70/30 cut, with 70 percent of the gross revenues going to developers. (Which is the same deal that Apple offers). And third, apps in the Catalog will also get access to detailed analytics (stats, ratings, etc) that will be shared with the rest of the community.

The Hardware

Here’s what it appears that Palm’s hope is: That the development community will begin to rally around this idea of openness, and that will in turn also feed its not-so-open App Catalog system. Palm, like Apple, sells its own hardware, so the 30 percent cut is not as vital as growing the development community to move more hardware units. But Palm, unlike Apple, is not awash with cash, and any little bit will help.

But with so many ex-Apple employees and a firm eye always on its rival, Palm has to know the key to their ultimate success does reside with the hardware sales. The Pre is good, but it’s not great. From a sheer hardware perspective, it’s not the iPhone. And it hasn’t sold well compared to the iPhone (despite investor Roger McNamee’s ridiculous quote from several months ago), and it’s no stretch to think now that it never will in its current form.

And I believe Palm agrees with me. Tonight, Rubinstein and the others made several remarks indicating that Palm’s position was a long-term strategy based around webOS, not around any one phone. Again, that’s similar to Apple’s position, it just so happens that all of Apple’s phones bare the same name.

The Palm Pixi might be slightly better, but it really just seems like the same phone as the Pre in a different form factor. If that’s the case, that won’t be good enough either. They need better, faster, stronger hardware to match the software.

The Software

WebOS is impressive in a number of ways, but the hardware does not do it justice right now. All the Palm employees tonight seemed well-versed on the key talking point of “multi-tasking,” which, of course, is another jab at the iPhone which cannot run third-party applications in the background. But the truth is that given the relatively slow speed at which the Pre handles multi-tasking, the iPhone 3GS’ application switching system is actually faster in many situations.

Of course, you can’t argue with things like instant messaging running in the background, but relying on that argument is not a sound long-term strategy: Eventually Apple will offer that too.

Palm is pitting webOS versus the iPhone OS, and that could well be a fair fight, but the hardware side is skewing that right now. That needs to change.

The Network

Also skewing the fight is the carrier limitation. We all complain about AT&T, but the fact is that it’s a much larger network than Sprint. The Pre has undoubtedly helped Sprint gain some customers, but it has not been the same as the iPhone with AT&T. And one reason for that may be a reluctance to sign up with a network that is smaller.

If Palm is able to work out a deal to get a device on Verizon’s network, that would be a huge win. But most indications lately seem to be that Verizon is still demanding control over various aspects of the device, like any app store — and it may have something to say about this new open idea. We may realize that such a move is silly on Verizon’s end because its own app store sounds like more carrier BS, but as the nation’s largest network, they are in a position of power.

Apple Marches On

Meanwhile, Apple is busy talking up the iPhone as the new gaming platform. Given webOS’s web-based nature, that’s an area Palm is going to have a hard time matching Apple in. And don’t think that Apple doesn’t realize it.

Remember, Apple originally envisioned development on the iPhone as being entirely web-based (for third-parties). But the community wanted something different, and so Apple relented. Now, because of that, it can take advantage of doing things like gaming.

Palm had better hope that Adobe’s new Flash plans play out in a way that allows some sort of better gaming experience on its devices.

The Gamble

While it’s hard to argue with open, there is a real potential problem with Palm’s position: While this all sounds great to us in the press who have been covering some of Apple’s shadier app dealings, and also to a number of developers who are fed up, the public at large simply doesn’t seem to care. As we already stated, Apple has huge numbers with regard to the iPhone and the App Store, and amazingly, they’re still accelerating. And that has happened in the middle of situations like this whole Google Voice fiasco.

The fact is that most users simply have no idea about any of this stuff. They see a sexy phone, with 85,000 apps to choose from, and they want it.

Now, maybe public perception of Apple will change, but unless they make an iPhone that’s a dud, that seems unlikely. And where the people are, the developers follow. In an ideal world, these developers might forgo the idea of potential riches in the App Store, to embrace a more open environment, but we don’t live in that world.

The Right Stuff

To be honest, I was surprised by how well Palm’s presentation went off tonight. There is absolutely no doubt that they are saying the right things. And I think Mitic, Rubinstein, Galbraith, and Almaer all laid out a vision for a mobile platform that we all want to see.

The problem is that if their own goal is to topple Apple, I just don’t see it happening. And between some of what they said tonight and some of the silly stuff, like iTunes syncing, I’m concerned they are too hung up on just one rival. One would hope they see the reality: They don’t have to topple Apple to win. Rubinstein himself noted that we’re in the middle of a fundamental shift to a post-PC world where mobile devices are king. And in such a world, there is definitely room for many players.

That said, Palm does have some financial issues that it needs to be concerned about if it doesn’t start moving units. In my mind, the key to that is to get better phones, and to get on more networks. Obviously, that’s easier said than done. webOS is pretty intriguing in a number of regards, but it needs some room to spread its wings. Or to throw open its jacket. The full monty.

A couple of demo applications made by third-party developers are already available on the Apple App Store and are built using the brand new Flash Professional CS5, of which a public beta with pre-release support for building applications for iPhone is planned for later this year.

You can sign up here if you want to be notified when the beta kicks off for real.

Basically, Flash Pro CS5 allows developers to use Flash technologies to develop content for iPhone and iPod Touch devices that were previously closed to them.  The Flash developer tool converts Flash apps into ones that can work on the iPhone, since the iPhone still does not support Flash.  So this is a workaround.  But developers can write new code or reuse existing web content to build applications for the devices, and because the source code and assets are reusable across the Flash Platform runtimes (Adobe AIR and Flash Player) it is aimed to also give developers a way to more easily target other mobile and desktop environments.

Note that this does not mean you’ll be able to watch Flash-based web content on your iPhone just yet:

The new support for iPhone applications in the Flash Platform tooling will not allow iPhone users to browse web content built with Flash technology on iPhone, but it may allow developers to repackage existing web content as applications for iPhone if they choose to do so.

Flash Player uses a just-in-time compiler and virtual machine within a browser plug-in to play back content on websites. Those technologies are not allowed on the iPhone at this time, so a Flash Player for iPhone is not being made available today.

Flash Professional CS5 will enable developers to build applications for iPhone that are installed as native applications. Users will be able to access the apps after downloading them from Apple’s App Store and installing them on iPhone or iPod Touch.

More information is available here and soon, also here.

These are the example applications that you can test now if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch (any model):

http://appsfire.com/selection.php?cid=1254768065-406887817&title=1st+Apps+running+flash&bkgcolor=FFFFFF

Direct links:

Chroma Circuit
Trading Stuff
Ficklebox
Just Letters
South Park
That Roach Game
Red Hood