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[perkiset]

A couple quite noteworthy things happened in the last 48 hours. Apple has released and official guideline about what they will accept into the app store, and they have lifted the restriction on 3rd party compilers/reconstructors.

First, Im pleased because although Flash isn't even something that Android machines want to brag about- the latest vesion is slow,clunky and buggy -Flash was just not well designed for mobiles. But the cross compiler bit had the smell of Jobsian grudge. So Im glad that's gone. We will see some real innovation there I believe. Adobe has already taken their all-but-shuttered program back off the bench and is spooling up even now. It was a good day for Adobe.

Next, with the public self outing of their iTunes store acceptance rules, things like Sean Kovacs' Google Voice client is back in the rush - in fact, he tweeted earlier that he's already got a preliminary OK from Apple that if he resubmits, he's in. This is nothing but good news.

My real pleasure here though, is that both these decisions seem really un-Jobslike. in fact, I think that the decisions were probably contrary to what he wanted to do. This is great because it means that the real Apple core (pun intended) is probably alive and wll and looking to exert itself. The stock market agrees, giving AAPL a nice little bump as well. (Not quite the rush though for Adobe, which jumped fully 12% on the news). I think this bodes well for the future. A tiny hint, perhaps, but a good one.

Last, and snarkiest, is the Why Now question. well, consider the US 3G model. their already talking about WAY faster networks overseas, not 4G but like 17G . Why can't we get there? Because the phone companies are going to amortize every bit of flow out of us they can, until they have to step up. consider when a company is getting behind. They lower prices or increase services. Others respond. Well just like airline pricing, if they all sort of wink then they can keep prices high until a new, disruptive player comes in and challenges them all. So IMO, Apple always new they'd go this direction, and they simply have held in in reserve until they needed a little nitrous oxide to get back in front of the pack. It's rather perfectly timed to create some havoc with the Android development community and Flash/HTML5 folks. So my pleasure here is that Apple seems to be playing a much more cagey and shrewd game than they have in the past - and I think that bodes well for the company and the market price. 

[perkiset]

Here's a good wrap up thread at 'Insider...

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/09/10/google_voice_enabled_apps_coming_back_to_app_store.html

[nop_90]

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/09/09statement.html
In particular, we are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need.

The 3G vs the 17G. Yes it is the amortization you are talking about. But also too much regulation, lack of competition.
The cell networks here are doing 3G,but also stationary wireless internet, "wireless cable TV","wireless landline" etc.
One cell network had a phone which was designed to spy on yaya (nanny), basically you outfit you house with cameras, and the phone would connect to them. This was a few years back, and it did not go anywhere. But probably that tech was used to do the "wireless cable TV".

Hard to tell what the future holds. 1/4 cell phones in the world is in china. China now has the highest amount of internet users.
Samsung and HTC are very popular in asia. IPhone has a reputation as a POS, mainly because it is locked.
The apple lifting of restrictions is a step in the right direction, but they have to do more.
Asian consumers do not think the same way as US consumers, and if apple ignores them, someone else will pay attention to them.

[perkiset]

I think the optimal sweet spot will be when apple allows other stores to sell stuff, but it breaks your warranty. Then I can do what I want, and apple can maintain an opt in walled garden. Any smarty, having hardware issues can simply re-factory the phone before going in.

Apple clearly doesn't want unsavory things running on the iPhone. The problem is, they have a browser. So if I was them i'd work a plan to try to maintain my name and image, while still letting people do what they want - even at the cost of their warranty. That would seem fair.

But no one's asking me, and their market cap is still a bit large than mine 

[nop_90]

I don't know perks What you are saying is true for US, but US no longer is the primary market.
This article here for example

Apple's Chinese iPhone sales explode
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/04/21/apples-chinese-iphone-sales-explode/
But then there is a link to
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2009/11/03/china-iphone-launch-a-disappointment/

About the only piece of useful in the article is :
A million or so Two million  phones in a country of half a billion cellphone owners may not sound like a lot, but according to Huberty, the addressable iPhone market in China (which she defines as people with with an annual income over $20,000 and an average cellphone bill of $22 per month) is about 50 million. If she's right, Apple may have captured 4% a significant percentage  of it in the space of six months.

In the philippines probably 75% of iphone users are "black market" ones. This is just from talking to fellow iphone users "you actually bought your iphone , it is not jail broke "

HTC appears to be concentrating on Asian and some European markets.
From this article it appears they are not really serious about a launch in USA.
http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/06/16/the-htc-desire-is-coming-to-us-carriers-in-august-but-probably-not-in-the-way-you-want/

The big news recently was that china just passed japan to have the 2nd largest GDP in the world. Real news was that in terms of purchasing power chinese GDP passed Japan 10 years ago. China has a walled system. They run 2 currencies, 1 for internal use Yuan, and 1 for external use RMB. Cute part is that foriegners can not buy Yuan. A lot of the internal companies stocks in china can be only purchased in Yuan. So it is a way of china doing protectionism. So when china saids a piece of infrastructure cost $1 billion US. That is after they have done their phoney accounting. Reality is it might really be worth $10 billion US.

From talking to my german neighbor. He is a salesman for a german company that makes "gears and valves". He is salesman for asia/china. China can not compete against germany when it comes to quality and price for these specific types of parts. From talking to business men in asia, common agreement is that china will not attempt to become reserve currency. Instead they are signing all deals in RMB. So it will become the defacto reserve currency of asia. So it might be an idea to diversify.

[kurdt]

What I'm interested to see if this actually means they will also accept more and more apps that compete with their own features. Like the photoframe app that got denied because it was too much like widget selector or something ridiculous like that.