iPhone, Google & My Wish next year

This year's top news would be iPhone. Actually I bought 2 even though I can't use them as phones in Korea. After $200 price cut, I was really upset.

But iPhone is still worth. Whenever I goes to the US, I am activating iPhone with pre-paid service. As a handset, it does not have best quality but it has best user interface. It is easy to use. Pundits always have been saying that ease of use is the key to the success of handset. If you look at Nokia phones, Samsung phones, and other handsets, you feel like you are in a maze. Too many functions are scattered around the menu trees. Sometimes it is not intuitive to locate functionalty what you want. Apple worked out this difficulties by sacrificing lots of important features like MMS, Java and Carrir specific things. Actually this kinds of jobs could be done by Apple. Usually Carrier is the boss. All the handset makers should have to follow their boss's orders. They have to integrate all the features that are not necessary for the most of users into their design. It worses the ease of use.

Fortunately, we will have another player like Apple in the next year. Google announced Android this year. They will encourage developers to make easy of use applications. The phones based on Google would be free of Operators tight grip.

I hope we can see bunch of user-oriented (ease-of-use) approaches in the mobile world. It dosen't need to be a touch screen phone.

Nokia&The Cloud,Helio YouTube,NTT DoCoMo Child-Friendly 3G Mobile Phone

Nokia&The Cloud
- Nokia announced an agreemnet with The Cloud (European WiFi provider) like Apple's agreement with Starbucks. Nokia will launch "Nokia Comes With Music" with UMG(Universal Music Group). Nokia accounced about Ovi (Internet Services). The Cloud deal is a part of Ovi Project. I have thought about this kinds of content-oriented shift. I really liked the way Nokia is doing. I hope to see they are innovating the world.

Helio YouTube
- Helio debuts feature-rich YouTube service. YouTube is one of the killer-applications even in the mobile. The mobile world need to give user YouTube experience.

NTT DoCoMo Child-Friendly 3G Mobile Phone
- Interesting concept. There is always niche market for old and children. Take a look at the phone. It is really cute.

Dell Smartphone, Tryphone.com

Dell Smartphone
- Dell seems to try another consumer device. Dell had AXIM in the PDA market. About a year after it stopped making AXIM models, it is returning with smartphone. Actually I thought they are making a MP3 player. Recently they bought Zing (audio streaming service). I was wrong. Mobile phone is really attractive device for business. Even if it is very small, you can earn lots of money. Look at Apple. I am expecting reasonable price ranged smartphone device like AXIM.

Tryphone.com
- Choosing a mobile phone out of lots of devices out there is really difficult. This site gives user a great tool to evaluate the real device before decision. It is in beta. There are only 4 devices to be able to try.

Google in mobile world, AT&T open network?, MS mobile ads, BetaBlue

Google in mobile world
- Google is trying to build up its position in the mobile world.
700MHz bid, whitespace program, Android platform, iPhone interface.
They are really ambitious. Will Google be successul in mobile, too? Actually I have mixed feeling about this. I like Google. But I don't want another MS. I hope Google is always open. Up to this point, Google is my taste.

AT&T open network?
- AT&T executive claimed that they has been always open network. I don't agree to this. Even though GSM network is generally open, the carrier has lots of restriction on the network. AT&T seems to have a different definition on "openness".

MS mobile ads
- MS has been trying to catch up Google in ads field. MS lost a chance in the past. Now, they are in ambition to have ads on their hands in the mobile world. They started MSN mobile ads. But ads market in mobile world is very competitive. We will see if MS would achieve their goal.

BetaBlue
- JetBlue started WiFi service in the flight. I hope we can see all flights with WiFi service in the near future.

Nokia UGC 25%

Nokia UGC 25%
- Nokia is one of the greatest visionary in the mobile business. I think they know what it will look like in the future. As lots of social networking services, IM services implies, user would be a key to all mobile services. Thanks to digital technology.

Google Maps 2.0, Verizon into Android

Google Maps 2.0
- My Location added. They are using Cell ID to locate the position. It is J2ME based mobile application. I am very curious if there are many handsets that implemented JSR179 for this. I need to dig in for more detail.

Verizon likely to join OHA
- After openning up their network, it is natural to have open mobile platform.

Google in bid for 700MHz, Blackberry 9000, Sprint back LTE, Activision Blizzard

Short note: I changed my tactic. From today, I will try to list all the issues I am interested in. Sure I try to add my opinions for all of them even though some are very short.

Google in bid for 700MHz
- Goolge made it official. It will go on the bid alone. I would like to see the real openness in the wireless world. It will change the whole picture about the mobile world. It will give more creativity and freshness to the all the players.

Blackberry 9000
- It looks like an another iPhone contender. As you already know, iPhone is lack of lots of good features (3G, MMS, Mobile Games, Java, Video Capture). I hope this new gadget fullfill the missing parts.
- In the other part of my thought, Blackberry is going out of its core market. It has been popular for its easy messaging capability. If they remove their excellent qwerty keyboard (best feature), what could be their real differentiator?

Sprint back LTE
- CDMA would have a big blow. We will see what other CDMA players (SKT, KTF, KDDI...) are doing for the future. In personal, I would like to have only one universal device.

Activision Blizzard
- Big merger. As of Korean, Blizzard has more power than EA. Will they beat EA in the brand power? We will see.

Motorola breakup possibility

Ichan talked about Zander's resignment. He is thinking it's not enough for the company. He would like to have Motorola split into 4 companies.
I am not sure if he is right. But it is worth to see what is happening.
Motorola lost its market share in the mobile handset field. It is now 3rd. 2nd is Samsung.
Long time ago, Motorola was no. 1.
It might lose no.3 in the near future. At the moment, the future for Motorola looks dark.

Google Android vs. JavaFX Mobile

I am a Java Engineer. I had been programming in Java for last 5 years. Recently, I am working on J2ME porting into a mobile device.

I am really happy to see this kinds of popularity around Java.
However one thing always have bugged me. "Fragmentation".

Original goal or motto of Java was "Write Once, Run Anywhere".
This is not true. There are 3 kinds of Java products. J2ME, J2SE, J2EE.
That's not it. We have to customize an application for the each specific platform even though it is in the same league like J2ME.
Even though all platforms abide by the rule set by SUN or other spec leads, there has been fragmentation.

Worse. Google and SUN added one (or mightbe two) more.
They who is proud of java based technology are always saying that they have huge amount of developer base. Is this real? I don't think so.
It is true there are lots of Java related people and product. But it is severely fragmented. The proud Java base is not that big (still big).

Unfortunately, Android and JavaFX Mobile have lots of similarity in common. Linux OS, Java Application Framework, Open platforme, and even its announcement year.

Java as an application framework is really great. But I don't want any more fragmentation. Lots of options would be good. Too many options, especially in the case that those are very simillar, would cause confusion.

Don't get me wrong. I am a Java advocate. I love Java. I would like to be a Java engineer as long as I can. What I really want is real "Write Once, Run Anywhere".