OSNews

Sorry, I don’t understand this; what did I do wrong? I can’t see any spelling mistakes there…

"the the deal violated local competition laws"
"the the"
I fixed it.

Even worse is the fact that it wasn’t copy/pasted.

Classic:) I have done the same thing in reports. I find that reading it aloud catches those types of mistakes, while reading it in your head you usually correct missing words and misspellings while out loud you will stumble over the word.

Sorry, I was talking about the laws (copy'n pasting them... and in the iPhone itself...), not your news item... =]

Yes, ánd you're living in an official dictatorship with this Harper dude.
What a jerk, I know how it feels we've got a very similar type over here in the Netherlands.
Great opportunity though. Because now you get to know how it feels to live in a dictatorship. Tell me, any difference? Any chance of US Army comin' over to "liberate" ya? :-P

The biggest effect is that the previous Liberal PMs have retroactively become much more popular.

Luckily, Harper's conservatives haven't managed to win anything more than a very slim minority government - so they haven't had the power to do any real damage (thank the Ineffable Bob for parliamentary democracy).

It's not looking like he'll be around much longer, either - he had to pro-rogue parliament just to avoid a vote of no confidence. And I think he's left a bad taste in the mouths of many people by trying to bring US-style inflammatory "talking-point" rhetoric into Canadian politics (their most recent tactics could be a copy-paste from the Karl Rove playbook).

Good luck getting rid of those reactionaries. Those folks will do whatever it takes to drag down Canada along with the American empire.
I saw this y.tube video somewhere in which (IIRC) Harper had this speech that was exactly the same (I mean, verbatim) as another speech by the Australian PM. Those people have this neocon network or something where they coordinate stuff, IAC they're clearly not thinking for themselves.

Definitely - I'm seeing more and more rhetoric from the Conservative party that appears to copy-pasted. It's made all the more obvious by the fact that a lot of the rhetoric simply isn't applicable in Canada.

Anyway, I've gone completely OT - enough ranting from me

Like the two are related, the CRTC been misguided long before the PCs took power. With Bell finally moving to a 3G network within the next few years maybe that will be the start of some reasonable competition in Canada with the iPhone.

Under the Harper government, the CRTC has managed to surpass even *their* typical levels of incompetency.



Does that include a move to GPRS? Last I checked, Bell / Telus was CDMA-only - which effectively rules them out as a carrier of the iPhone, even if they have been pretty gung-ho to hawk their consolation prize (aka, the Samsung Instinct).

The deal was a run for 5 years, including iPhone 2G, 3G and all further upcoming declinaison...

Kochise

This type of thinking misses the point by a mile. It's not about the feature list. It's about how pleasant those features are to actually use. In that sense, every phone out there is obsolete compared to the iPhone.

I was one of those guys who swore by the fact that phones were meant to be used for making calls and nothing else and refused to touch any of the so-called "smart phones" out there-- until the iPhone.

Even a friend of mine, who was a Blackberry fanboy for years, eventually bought an iPhone and now he won't use anything else.

Like it or not, even a year and a half after its release, the iPhone still gets lots of attention because it's a game changer, and everyone else is scrambling to find ways to compete with it.


I'm sure that quite a few are sitting under Christmas trees right now, and their recipients will be very happy to unwrap them a week from today.

It's a touch screen. There are dozens of touch screen phones out there. Apple is sure good at advertizing its product but the iphone is not the first touch screen and it's not the best either. Except Apple fans, I seriously don't believe it will sell very well this christmas. Many other phones are more open (you can install hundred of thousands of software on any phone but the iphone), as easy to operate, can send MMS, are better quality and are far cheaper. Maybe it will sell well in the US (more Apple fans), but I don't believe it will sell well in Europe or in Asia.

Edited 2008-12-18 09:02 UTC

the iphone is a HUGELY successful product. The mobile phone market is very competitive yet Apple are the 3rd largest mobile phone manufacturer now

im sure not every user is an apple fanboy, maybe, just maybe its a good product that suits their needs...

p.s. I do not own an iphone as my network do not offer it in the uk and i now get to many loyalty perks to leave...

I believe Apple is not in the top 10 mobile manufacturers, not even in the US.

EDIT: I've found some statistics on the Web.

http://stats.getjar.com/statistics/
Apple is 12th mobile manufacturer
Look at the device table. The iphone is not in the top 100, it's the 212th most sold mobile worldwide, 0.04% of the market, as of November 2008. In the US, it's worse: 0.02%
There are 72 Nokia N95 for 1 Apple iPhone in the world, and the N95 is newer than the iPhone... Maybe the fact that the N95 can send MMS and do J2ME has something to do with it?

Edited 2008-12-18 11:36 UTC

The problem with those statistics is that they are based on measuring the traffic of a number of wap sites:
http://forum.getjar.com/knowledge/GetJar/Developer_FAQ/Q_How_does_G...

Do you think that many iPhone users use wap to browse the web?

I don't think N95 users use the wap either.
Anyway, I don't think the statistics are reliable, but I think it is safe to say that Apple is not in the top 10 mobile manufacturers by units sold. Just look around you!

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/10/21/apple_iphone_3g_sales...

they are the 3rd larges after Nokia and Samsung in terms of units shipped.

please note that means they sell more than the established players like Sony, LG and RIM (blackberry)

Your link says "Apple also announced that it is now the third largest mobile phone maker by revenue"
It talks about revenue, not units.
It comes from an Apple satelite site and is misleading. Indeed, Apple revenues are stronger than Sony Ericsson and Motorola, but Apple does not just sell mobile phones, they also sell ipods and computers.
They say they sold $4.6 billions, but that includes everything (from ipods to computers to iphones). their own quarterly report says $419 millions (ten times less):
http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q308data_sum.pdf
On the other hand, Sony Ericsson and Motorola only sell mobile phones, and (nearly) all their revenue come from mobile phones. They probably sold 10 times more phones than Apple each.

Anyway, it's hard to find reliable statistics, but I don't have the feeling that Apple is selling much. I don't see iPhones everywhere. The last time I've seen one was more than 6 months ago...
I believe it is safe to say Apple is not in the top 10 mobile manufacturers.

Edited 2008-12-18 13:17 UTC

your quite right!

my mistake, I read the units shipped was more than RIM and assumed it was refering to shipping units when it said 3rd

The iPhone beat RIM's BlackBerry shipments last quarter; RIM shipped 6.1 million handsets compared to Apple's near 6.9 million. Apple is now the third-largest mobile phone supplier in terms of revenue. Nokia and Samsung are first and second respectively while LG and Motorola are fourth and fifth.

The 4.6B is from just the phones, not including Macs or iPods. Their total revenues last quarter were 11.7B non-GAAP, or 7.9B GAAP (subscription accounting, where they spread certain revenues over 8 quarters).

Microsoft does not sell phones!

heard of Windows Mobile? Sure looks like a phone to me.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/en-us/default.mspx

Yes you're right, but 99% of the phones run Symbian.

Good, I hope the govt doesn't screw around with Symbian either.

Doesn't to me. Windows Mobile is an operating system for phones. What Microsoft provides on that site is a list of phones running their system and links to where you can buy them. They don't sell the phones themselves.