iPad parts cost at least $259, what about new iPhones?

For innovative products, price and cost may at first not be directly related, but, as Damon Runyon says, "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that is the way to bet."

I enjoy reading how iSuppli and other firms dissemble products to determine their cost. For example, Apple's iPad tablet computer costs as little as $259.60 to build.

Materials for the iPad, which went on sale Apr. 3, include a touchscreen display that costs $95 and a $26.80 processor designed by Apple and manufactured by Samsung Electronics, according to El Segundo (Calif.)-based iSuppli. This analysis means that the components of the lowest-priced iPad, which includes 16 GB of memory, constitute 52% of its $499 retail price, on par with other Apple products including the iPhone 3GS. You can find more details on the costs in an article by Arik Hesseldahl in Business Week.

Will the iPad price trend resemble the iPhone? Back in 2007, early iPhone adopters paid $600 for a phone. Two months later, Apple dropped the price to $400. Then, in June 2009, it introduced a better version, with twice the storage, for $200, one-third the original’s price. Now as we anxiously anticipate a new iPhone, we all wonder what the price will be.

Back to the iPad, will the cost drop significantly? Probably so. And when it does, we should follow the advice of DAMON DARLIN, “Applause, Please, for Early Adopters,” as related in the NYTimes.

“WHY would anyone rush to buy a product knowing full well that it would be cheaper — and probably better — in a matter of months?

”What is truly remarkable about this surge in consumption is that early adopters — those who simply have to own a new gadget right away — cheerfully exhibited what might seem to be irrational behavior. These ardent consumers will stand in long lines, if that’s what it takes, to get an overpriced gadget ahead of everyone else they know.” In my own case, I want to thank my former student, Rick Genter, the first person to show me an iPad.

If you are an entrepreneur contemplating product development in the iPad/iPhone arena, or represent a large volume purchaser of similar products, it would be very helpful to have direct access to the reports from iSuppli. “Unfortunately iSuppli does not allow for public posting of our report pricing,” says Debra Jaramilla, Manager, Marketing. “However, please do direct them (you) to info@isuppli.com or 310.524.4007 for more questions.”

KPCB Doubles iPhone Fund, Steve Jobs Happy, But Boston Developers Prefer Android

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) just announced the doubling of its venture capital iFund to $200 million for companies developing applications for Apple's iPhone OS family of products, including iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

"Kleiner Perkins has done a terrific job at finding, funding and supporting great iPhone app developers," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We are thrilled that they are doubling the size of their fund, along with expanding it to now include iPad developers too."

Established in 2008 as a $100 million investment pool, fourteen iFund backed companies have been supported by an additional $330 million from follow-on investors.

KPCB also announced iFund-supported companies have more than 20 applications in development for the soon-to-be-released iPad, with 11 available at first ship on April 3. KPCB noted the iPhone has created an inflection in mobile content consumption and the iPad will lead the next wave of innovation in mobile computing. The iFund is increasing its investment dollars to back entrepreneurs and build companies that focus on these areas. Particular areas of interest on iPad include entertainment, communication, social networking, commerce, health care, and education.

"Welcome to the brave new post-PC era where a swoosh of fluidity replaces the traditional mouse-bound GUI. A new, truly revolutionary platform is rare, and a prize for entrepreneurs," said John Doerr, KPCB Partner. "We expect all ventures to have an iPad strategy. We will fund many more ventures for iPad, and the iFund will accelerate their success."

In Boston, developers prefer Android. As Erin Kutz wrote in Xconomy last month, “So the iPhone may be the prettiest, the Blackberry may boast the biggest smartphone market share, and the Windows Mobile platform is, um, around, but it’s Android that’s best for developing apps. Or at least it was the Android developers who best defended their platform at the smartphone smackdown during our Mobile Madness event.”

Of course, many new applications under development will likely be available on both platforms.

Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day using a free Irish translator on your smart phone

To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and Seachtain na Gaeilge, Maithu, a small Irish company, has launched two FREE Irish language applications for the iPhone and Google Android App stores.

The 'Get the Focal Irish Translator' is a two way Irish-English, English-Irish Translator with a database of over 13,000 words and terms which live in your pocket. It is quick and accurate, can be used for completing that Irish assignment, reading articles as Gaeilge, or filling in a ‘cúpla focal’ here and there. If you're looking for help with speaking Irish, Muithu also offers a full version which contains pronunciations for all translations.

According to Kerrill Thornhill, “We launched the free version of the 'Get the Focal' app for the iPhone and Android app stores about 6 days ago, there have been over 350 downloads of the free app to date: 280 on the iPhone, over 70 on Android. The paid version of the 'Get the Focal' app was launched in September last year. There have been several hundred downloads of the paid app to date, generating reports from iTunes account is not very user friendly so that's about as accurate as I can be at the moment.”

Kerrill tells me you can download the iPhone version here. I tried it, it is indeed very easy to use.

You might try it for your next speech at South Boston’s Saint Patrick’s Day pre-parade political roast. The best received speaker on Sunday was Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein president, who spoke of the long struggle for peace in Northern Ireland, opening and closing his remarks in Irish.

“We want equality. We want peace, we would not have progress, which we’re making in the process back home, if it wasn’t for the encouragement, assistance, and support of people here,’’ said Adams, who received two standing ovations.

Go raibh míle maith agat, (Thanks a mil), to Kerrill for this free app.

Bad joke: Back when the Irish Tiger was growling loudly, some wits suggested that Ireland was indeed becoming bilingual: English and Polish. Now that the recession has reduced immigration; we might need a new joke.

Developing iPhone Apps, a Virtual Workshop

Scanning the list of events for MassMobile Month, I found one that might appeal to you even if you are not convenient to the Boston area.


It’s a two hour virtual workshop covering the business of developing iPhone applications. The presenter will be Gregory Raiz, the founder of Raizlabs, who has worked on over 20 iPhone projects. It takes place on March 8. You can sign up and attend online.

The target audience for this talk includes individuals or businesses considering building an iPhone, iPad or mobile application or planning on having a product developed. No technical expertise is required; however, a familiarity with the iPhone and the app store is recommended.

I myself signed up, even though I normally dislike online tutorials.

You can sign up here on eventbrite, where the workshop is described as follows:

This workshop will cover the business of building iPhone applications. It will address the risks and the potential rewards of producing an application and having it for sale in the iTunes App Store. The workshop will cover the following aspects of the business including:

 • How to pick an application concept

• What makes an application successful

• Building a business vs. building an app

• The highs and lows of success

• Getting noticed in a sea of 180,000 apps

• Apps that compliment your core business

• Pricing your application and App Store business models

• Designing and developing - what to expect

• Is your app social? (Email, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

• Costs of building applications

• Marketing app basics

• Application Rejections

• Resources and Tools

• Beyond the iPhone (Android, Blackberry, Web)

IT's Perfect Storm: Where Smart Phones, The Cloud, and Virtualization Meet

Last month I cited a Morgan Stanley Report on the prospects for "the mobile internet."  Upon reflection, I believe  the Morgan Stanley view misses some of the key forces remaking the IT industry today.   I am now preparing a lecture series on this topic and would appreciate your thoughts.

Proposed Lecture Series: Information Technology’s “Perfect Storm”

Accelerating information technology is having a disruptive influence on our economy, but the underlying forces causing this disruption are yet to be identified and understood by the vast majority of business leaders, government officials, and technologists themselves.

Like the Perfect Storm, three fundamental technologies: smart phones, cloud computing, and virtualization; are changing the face of our society and changing business as we understand it. The greatest effects are most visible at the points where the three intersect and merge. This combination threatens massive restructuring not only in computing and information technology, but in financial markets, entertainment, news, politics, education, societal values, and in the very ways we come to learn and understand things (epistemology).

In a March, 2009 blog post, the iPhone as a Murder Suspect, this author attributed many of the following deaths to the ever evolving smart phone: phone booths, pay phones, the phone on the kitchen wall, landline phones, the home phone number, paper address books, the “ month at a glance” calendar, wristwatches, PDAs. Also threatened are airline boarding passes, paper coupons, TV remote controls, garage door openers, point and shoot cameras, Walkman and MP3 players, and handheld gaming devices

A very recent and extremely visible disruptive effect of this Perfect Storm was its impact on the market for handheld and dashboard mounted GPS devices. Smart phones with location detecting chipsets and large color screens can do everything that dedicated GPS units from Garmin, Magellan, and Tom Tom can do. Smart phones are leading this attack, with the Cloud providing reserve troops. By using the smart phone for directions and display, while accessing continually updated maps and directions from the Cloud, supplemented by traffic reports, weather updates, parking advice, and shopping information, the phone becomes a far superior functional device and its multi-purpose nature provides an insurmountable cost advantage over dedicated GPS devices.

Moreover, the low cost and ease of writing and distributing applications for the smart phone and Cloud encourages vast numbers of entrepreneurs to extend the capabilities of these technologies in yet-undiscovered ways. Google’s Q4 2009 introduction of a free navigation application wiped 16 per cent off the valuation of Garmin and 23 per cent off Tom Tom.

And the story will grow more dramatic. Our three technologies have a long history, but recent advances have brought them to the fore. These pivotal events over the past couple of years have wrought fundamental changes:

Smart Phones: The July, 2008 introduction of the iPhone 3G with its application library made the smart phone a true general purpose computing device. Within 16 months, developers had created over 100,000 apps for the revolutionary App Store, making it the world’s largest applications store. App Store users have downloaded well over three billion apps, clearly making it the world’s most popular applications store. Google just introduced its own smart phone, the Nexus One, in Jan., 2010. A variety of smart-phone like devices of varying sizes and capabilities, sometimes called netbooks or tablets, are being delivered this year.

Cloud Computing: The 2008 publication of “The Big Switch” by Nicholas Carr brought Cloud computing to public attention, Amazon had launched its pioneering service, the Amazon Elastic Cloud, or EC2, in August 2006, primarily to monetize the extra capacity Amazon had purchased to handle peak loads for holidays. Microsoft will introduce a competing service in 1st Quarter 2010. Other major cloud providers include Google and IBM, as well as several smaller companies.

Virtualization: First a bit of history - IBM’s mainframe based VM (Virtual Machine) operating system was the most versatile, responsive, and secure system of its day. First prototyped in 1966, the VM System required both special hardware features and its own software. VM systems developed for microprocessors were far less robust until 2006, when both Intel and AMD delivered chips that support a full virtual machine implementation. Now processors can run unmodified guest operating systems with minimal performance degradation. VMware’s IPO in August, 2007, brought these developments to the attention of the investment and user communities. Virtualization, in the form of Virtual Machines and Virtual Operating Environments, provides the technological foundation for Cloud Computing. It has been successfully demonstrated on smart phones, and provides the likely basis on which future business, government, and social applications will be designed and developed.

3,000,000,000 Downloads, App Store Growth Boggles The Mind!

While preparing a proposal for a series of University lectures, over the weekend I looked up some figures for the growth of the Apple App Store. I wanted the numbers to be solid and verifiable; what I came up with was 100,000 Apps leading to 2 billion downloads. This morning, I sent off my proposal to several of my colleagues for review.


This afternoon Apple announced that it is now 3 billion downloads. I’m not hurt by the increase, other than to worry that the industry is changing faster than I can update my presentation.

Last time I talked to my former IBM colleague, Jim Maguire, he was still travelling the world teaching a course on IBM OS/360 Job Control Language that he had first prepared in the 1960s. His comment: “the best thing is it never changes.”

The essence of Apple’s press release is here:

CUPERTINO, California—January 5, 2010—Apple® today announced that more than three billion apps have been downloaded from its revolutionary App Store by iPhone® and iPod touch® users worldwide.

“Three billion applications downloaded in less than 18 months—this is like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “The revolutionary App Store offers iPhone and iPod touch users an experience unlike anything else available on other mobile devices, and we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon.”

iPhone and iPod touch customers in 77 countries worldwide can choose from an incredible range of apps in 20 categories, including games, business, news, sports, health, reference and travel.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

Note:  The first version of this post left out three zeros, claiming downloads in millions, rather than billions.  It is always dangerous to be both the writer and the editor.

Morgan Stanley Acclaims the Mobile Internet

Morgan Stanley has just released “The Mobile Internet Report” containing lots of great financial and market data along with some well-designed PowerPoint slides. For a flavor of the report, here are a few excerpts from a truly extensive document.

Material wealth creation / destruction should surpass earlier computing cycles. The mobile Internet cycle, the 5th cycle in 50 years, is just starting. Winners in each cycle often create more market capitalization than in the last. New winners emerge, some incumbents survive – or thrive – while many past winners falter.

A single galvanizing event – like Microsoft's Windows 3.0 launch in 1990, Netscape's IPO in 1995, or Apple's iPhone debut in 2007 – jolts the industry forward and captures the hearts and minds of consumers;

Make no mistake; Apple (and others) are not just trying to upset the cell phone market. They are aiming to transform how communications works, how entertainment and news are distributed, how goods and services are purchased... and how we control all this stuff from the ever-expanding, rechargeable remote controls we carry in our hands. To date, Apple's products and timing have been impeccable.

The US has grabbed the leadership, after being a global mobile laggard for more than a decade – thanks to the likes of Apple, Google, Amazon.com, and many others (including a bevy of startups)… and Silicon Valley competitive juices show no signs of letting up.

According to Morgan Stanley’s model, tech cycles tend to last ten years. We entered the Next Major Computing Cycle – Mobile Internet – 2 years ago.

Big winners in the four previous cycles include the following:

Mainframe Computing (1960s)
IBM
NCR
Control Data
Sperry
Honeywell
Burroughs

Mini Computing (1970s)
Digital Equipment
Data General
HP
Prime
Computervision
Wang Labs


Personal Computing (1980s)
Microsoft
Cisco
Intel
Apple
Oracle
EMC
Dell
Compaq

Desktop Internet Computing (1990s)
Google
AOL
eBay
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Japan
Amazon.com
Tencent
Alibaba
Baidu
Rakuten

Mobile Internet Computing (2000s)
Still in the early innings; opportunities abound.

iPhone most popular mobile phone in the US, says Nielson

Nielson Wire market research just announced the most popular mobile phones in the US. The iPhone topped the list, no real surprise; among the missing: Nokia. The most popular sites visited were topped by Google Search, Yahoo! Mail, and Gmail. The most popular video site was YouTube. Click here to view all their data, followed by a barrage of comments.

Their list:

1. Apple iPhone – 4%
2. BlackBerry 8300 series – 3.7%
3. Razr V3 series – 2.3%
4. LG VX9100 enV2 – 2.1%
5. LG Voyager – 1.7%
6. Samsung SPH-M540 – 1.5%
7. BlackBerry 9530 series 1.4%
8. LG VX9700 – 1.3%
9. LG Vu series – 1.3%
10. BlackBerry 8100 series – 1.2%

Is Zipcar leading a second generation of iPhone Apps?

Fully one quarter of Zipcar members use iPhones, according to Zipcar’ s Luke Schneider, who unveiled a new iPhone app at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. Scott Kirsner reports “it got me salivating (I'm a Zipcar member): it offers GPS help finding cars that are available, and can even honk the car's horn to help you locate it in a parking lot. See the video demo here, wherein Schneider shows off their use of Apple’s 3.0 SDK mapkit and demonstrates the Honk icon to spontaneous applause.

From Kirsner’s Innovation Economy blog: “Zipcar CEO Scott Griffith told me today that he has already been testing the beta version on his iPhone, with a few of the company's cars here in Boston. ‘We're finishing the app now, and then we have to do a complete new software download to our whole car network, so that iPhones will have the ability to honk the horn and unlock the car for you,’ Griffith said. The app will be free. Griffith estimates that it'll be available in about four weeks. Future versions of the Zipcar app, he added, might give Zipcar members discounts on music, or deals on iPhone navigation apps or other travel-related apps.

Could this be the start of a new wave, the Second Generation of iPhone Apps? It took fifteen years to get to third generation computers (IBM/360). Can an iPhone generation be less than a year?

Let us now praise iPhone users

Forrester Research says iPhone users are richer, younger, and perhaps even more productive at work than those who use competing smart phones. Few of you will believe that I am richer, younger, and more productive than Dan Bricklin, who uses a G1; although he also has an iPod touch so he can experiment with the interface.

Neil Hughes reports on the study in his blog on Apple Insider:

iPhone users are younger: 30 percent of iPhone users in 2008 were of Generation Y, a larger portion than the rest of the smart phone market,

iPhone users are more educated and affluent: 49 percent of iPhone users have a college education, and 67 percent earn more than $70,000 a year,

iPhone customers spend more on their service: the average monthly phone bill for an iPhone user was $87, compared to $76 for the smart phone market, and $66 for traditional mobile phone users,

Employers are slightly less likely to subsidize an iPhone: 24 percent of respondents with an iPhone said they are compensated by their employer for their phone bill, while 28 percent of smart phone users have their employee pay all or part of it.

Comparing customer Internet usage, the study shows that the iPhone blows away its competitors: 78 percent of iPhone users reported they access the Internet at least weekly on their phone, while only 38 percent of the rest of the smart phone market were on the mobile Web that often.

The study was performed last year, since which I have become neither younger nor more affluent. Disregarding Generation Y, Dan is a Baby Boomer, and I modestly describe myself as a member of the Greatest Generation.

I continue to recommend Dan's book: "Bricklin on Technology." One of his chapters: “What Will People Pay For?” has been reprinted in the Harvard Business Review. You can read an excerpt here.

Skyhook Locator System in NY Times today

A concise and informative article on Skyhook and its Locator System appears in the Business Section of Today’s NY Times. Whereas the Times does not make its site available to non subscribers, you can find some of the same information on my earlier blog post on Skyhook’s CEO, Ted Morgan.

I do find certain confusion in the industry about location sensing, its capabilities and how it works. On the iPhone, location sensing takes place as follows.

When the owner selects an application involving location, such as Tides, Latitude, Yelp, Loopt, Car finder, or Taxi Magic, the iPhone calculates whether it is likely to get the best and fastest information from its own GPS chip or from Skyhook’s system.

GPS searches for Satellites. Skyhook checks a list of nearby Wi-Fi access points and cell towers against its database and triangulates the device’s location within 30 to 60 feet. Skyhook claims its system, XPS, is superior whenever GPS signals are blocked by walls or trees, and that XPS responds much more quickly than GPS. The Skyhook data base now includes more than 100 million wireless networks and 700,000 cellular towers.

Skyhook’s XPS is now installed on 37 million Apple iPhones and iPod Touches worldwide, as well as a variety of other devices. The company says it handles 250 million location requests a day. Good show, Skyhook!

Videos, humor, Ballmer disses the iPhone

It being a dreary Saturday, I’m looking around for amusing items. This brief video poking fun at iPhones, iPhone Apps, and social networks uses language no worse than my Granddaughter uses on Facebook, so it must be OK.

I’m less amused by Steve Ballmer’s recent comments. “There’s still, in my opinion, more venture capital than there are good ideas to support the venture capital,” Ballmer said in a speech to Stanford students studying entrepreneurship as part of the school’s “Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders” series. As the worldwide economy contracts, fewer mediocre business ideas will get funded, he said. That will result in a healthier startup environment than exists now, when “too many companies can hang on for almost too long with too much money.”

Of course, the flaw in his argument lies in our imperfect ability to separate the good ideas from the bad in their early stages. If you would like see an amusing but significant example, look at this video from 30 months ago, Microsoft CEO Ballmer laughs at Apple iPhone. A sample, “We’re selling millions and millions and millions of phones this year, Apple is selling zero.”

Making Money Selling Free Apps?

How much money can you make from a free iPhone application? Quite a bit says Jason Kincaid, writing in TechCrunch.

A report from AdWhirl says that applications that crack the top 100 in the Free Apps list make $400-$5000 a day - a wide range, but even at the low end that works out to around $12,000 a month. And while applications that do reach the top positions in the App Store eventually lose steam, after the initial dip revenue tends to remain consistent over time. Of course, making it to the top of the Free Apps list is easier said than done, and most developers make far less than $400 a day. But the same is also true of the vast majority of paid applications - in fact, there’s actually less competition on the Free side of the store.

As for AdWhirl, the company allows developers to tap into multiple iPhone ad networks at once. It is obviously in AdWhirl’s interest to promote iPhone advertising, since that’s their business. But it’s clear that there are definitely quite a few free applications making good money.

Anyway, cheapskates such as myself no longer have to feel guilty about selecting free Apps. And when Blackberry and Nokia open their own App stores, it will certainly unleash the creativity of lots more application developers.

What is Near Field Communications?

Near Field Communication or NFC is a short-range high frequency wireless communication technology enabling the exchange of data between devices over about a 10 centimeter (around 4 inches) distance. NFC is primarily aimed at usage in mobile phones. The technology is a simple extension of the proximity-card standard. An NFC device can communicate with existing contactless smartcards and readers, and is thereby compatible with the contactless infrastructure already in use for security, public transportation, and payment.

Plenty of applications are possible, such as:

Mobile ticketing in public transport — an extension of the existing contactless infrastructure,
Mobile payment — the device acts as a debit/ credit payment card,
Smart poster — the mobile phone is used to read RFID tags on outdoor billboards in order to get info on the move.

Future applications could include:

Electronic ticketing — airline tickets, concert/event tickets, and others,
Electronic money -- stored on the card and used like cash,
Travel cards—parking, museum discounts, tourist passes,
Identity documents -- student IDs, recreation pass, dump sticker,
Mobile commerce -- ads, coupons, payments, gifts, loyalty programs,
Electronic keys — car keys, house/office keys, hotel room keys, etc.,
NFC can be used to configure and initiate other wireless network connections such as Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.

The MIT Mobile Experience Lab recently issued a 45-page report on NFC and student life:

“We developed the following directions in which new innovative ways of using NFC with the mobile phone could be developed: Ubiquitous information, Health/Safety, Networking, eMoney, Smart Mobility, Entertainment, and Smart Objects. An example of ubiquitous information would be a virtual tour guide where the user could tap his/her phone on the tags as they toured a place, and thus consult the information pertaining to the site, as well as receive information about next items on the itinerary, where to eat/drink, and also the main commercial activities in the area. This system could easily be ported to libraries, museums, stores, etc. In regards to Health, a person could easily use NFC to record their workout data from exercise machines, as well as monitor their daily calorie consumption when ordering from smart menu boards. With this information, your phone could give timely diet suggestions, gym programs, and doctor alerts.”

The hot application for NFC, which some believe will be the killer app, is using the cell phone as a credit card. VISA and MasterCard have both recently announced a number of large-scale pilot implementations worldwide. Nokia has announced new NFC enabled phones. Blaze Mobile has announced the Blaze Mobile Wallet as an iPhone App, while also announcing a joint effort with MasterCard Worldwide to promote an NFC based mobile payment sticker that can be affixed to any cell phone, allowing “Tap & Go" purchases at any of the over 141,000 merchant locations currently accepting PayPass. To my surprise, there are already 20 PayPass locations in Portsmouth, NH, and 30 in Portland, ME. You can search for merchants in your own town here.

iPhone: the Dreadnought of the 21st Century?

I found such a well written post on the iPhone by MG Siegler in TechCrunch that I felt a need to send you a couple of excerpts.

First a few facts: “People can downplay the actual number of iPhones in circulation all they want — the fact of the matter is that it has changed things. While there were some third-party mobile app developers before Apple’s App Store, they received almost no attention, and as such, it wasn’t really a viable business. Now, everyone and their mother is flocking to develop for the App Store. And every major mobile player is rushing to make their own app stores. But Apple’s already has over 35,000 apps — and in a few short hours, there will have been one billion apps downloaded in just 9 months.”

Now a strong opinion: “The fact of the matter is, that iPhone is simply the best all-in-one device that I’ve ever owned. I cannot imagine my life without it now. I would be lost — sometimes literally — without it. I say that because I know that of the 21 million iPhone owners out there — there are a great deal who feel the exact same way. That may be annoying, and may even sound pretentious to those who don’t own an iPhone — but I’m giving you my honest take as someone who has owned and/or tried a lot of the so-called “smartphones” out there.”

As I write, MG’s post has generated 125 comments, some of which are very insightful. Take a look.

As for Dreadnoughts, The British battleship HMS Dreadnought had such an impact when launched in 1906 that battleships built after her were referred to as 'dreadnoughts'. The arrival of the dreadnoughts sparked a technology-based arms race, principally between Britain and Germany but reflected worldwide, as the new class of warships became a crucial symbol of national power.

Office on your iPhone?

Blogging from the Web 2.0 Expo keynote, Jason Kincaid reports that Stephen Elop, President of Microsoft Business Division, hinted that we may be seeing Microsoft Office make its way to the iPhone sometime soon. After his interviewer Tim O’Reilly caught him on the comment, Elop backtracked a bit, stating “not yet, keep watching”. But it’s clear that an iPhone version of Office is on his mind.
Rumors of an Office client for the iPhone have been circulating as users clamor for a way to edit their Word and Excel files on the go (the iPhone allows them to view them, but doesn’t include any editing functionality).
I found Jason’s post on TechCrunch this morning; you should check it out for the comments, which were mostly unfavorable to Office. For more levity, you should check out this flickr mock up proposing what Office might look like on your iPhone.