Well you may notice the new headline. Trying to find 10 stories that were really interesting was sometimes a challenge. And sometimes it made it hard to then find one or two others to give a little more perspective on. So I’m shrinking the list.  Here we go:

1. I’m not sure why I’m so riveted by the patent fights between Oracle and Google over Java and Apple v. Samsung and HTC. Well maybe it’s because they may have industry-altering implications. Nobody covers it better than Florian Mueller. This latest post on Google’s flawed stance on patents is gold.
2. I love visualizations. I think that they can be very powerful. Here’s a new app that provides a visual interpretation of your Facebook friends social graph. It’s not 100% perfect, but it does a nice job of clustering real social circles. Automatically creating or suggesting to add friends to ‘circles’ in this way would be a cool, easy to use, feature for Facebook and operate much closer to real life than G+ Circles (IMO)
3. AirBnB, fresh off their big fundraising round has a PR disaster (aka #Ransackgate) as a “host” house is trashed. CEO Chesky quickly pens an article about safety for TechCrunch, but it’s easy to look concerned in retrospect. The apology that came on Monday doesn’t make me feel much better either. But this is what creeps me out about their model.
4. HP joins OpenStack along with Dell. Big, big win for the open source PaaS, which now seems destined to be the leading private/hybrid cloud stack.
5. Google launches Hotel Finder, a new “experiment” to help users find the perfect hotel. What I like about the tool is the more exact, visual way you can create a search area that’s not simply a radius around a particular location. I’m not so sure that the rate discount comparison feature is something that hotels will appreciate however.
6. Cloud Computing and SOA: 2 great tastes that taste great together. JP Morgenthal pens a nice article about what Cloud can learn from SOA and vice versa.
7. Lastly, I’m sorta sad to see Borders go (not that I ever bought books there; but the idea of fewer bookstores in general), but this is a great article written from a branding point of view.

Image courtesy of Kevin Dooley via Creative Commons.

As an NY Islander’s fan I’ll always remember legendary NY sportcaster Bill Mazer saying “7:11, lucky numbers for the good guys”, in a sports special about the Islanders winning their first Stanley Cup over the Philadelphia Flyers on an overtime goal by Bobby Nystrom (assists by Lorne Henning and Wayne Merrick).  But on to the new from the week of July 11th, 2011.

1. Aliph, the company behind the Jawbone noise cancelling Bluetooth headsets, just raised $70M. I love their products. I just got my second Jawbone, the new Era, last week. Maybe they’ll invest all that money in making better earbuds.
2. Citrix buys Cloud.com to enhance the virtualization giant’s cloud infrastructure offering. Cloud.com is already a major player in the market and has a very high-profile client in Zynga. CloudAve’s Krishnan Subramanian provides great analysis of the impact of the deal on Citrix’s business and their competitors.
3. Google beats Wall Street EPS estimates by almost $1 and shares are up.
4. The concerns around Google’s use of Java in Android seem to keep escalating, especially with Oracle asking for Google CEO Larry Page to testify and Judge Alsup’s recent notice which references ‘willful infringement’ and could result in treble damages. If you’re interested in this story, you’ve got to be reading Mueller’s blog.
5. Tom Friedman writes that you need to be thinking like a tech startup when looking for a job in today’s market.
6. Building great applications is important, but it’s wasted effort if they can’t be deployed easily. F5’s Lori MacVittie introduces the application deployment lifecycle and says the enterprise needs to focus more effort on improving the application deployment process.
7. Is Microsoft moving to a single OS unifying the desktop, phone, gaming and home media platforms? Apparently those were the hints dropped at last week’s Worldwide Partner Conference. But I don’t quite buy it unless Microsoft moves to a lighter weight Chrome-y style OS.  And it’s harder to comprehend under a Ballmer-led Microsoft. Time will tell.
8. Citrix isn’t the only virtualization technology provider working on enhancing their cloud infrastructure play, as VMWare introduces its Comprehensive Cloud Infrastructure Suite.
9. With all the hype around Google+, that just adds to the complexity of managing social profiles and across tools in the enterprise. Enter OpenSocial 2.0.
10. On Friday July 15, the ITC handed down an initial determination in Apple’s favor saying that HTC’s Android products infringed 2 Apple patents. If this determination is upheld, it can have a major impact on not just HTC, but other Android licensees. Fantastic analysis by Florian Mueller.

OK, I thought this post went up a few days ago, but it was saved as a draft. Sorry for the delay:

1. Linkedin had an amazing IPO, going out at $45 and seeing the stock price more than double in the first day of trading. That’s a market valuation of over $9 billion…with a “B”.
2. Is Android gaining market share because of carriers? It seems so. And it makes sense. Android’s “openness” gives the carriers the ability to “customize” the phones with pre-loaded (often carrier-branded) apps, and more importantly, get a piece of the transaction pie through direct to carrier billing, whereas all iPhone billing goes through iTunes.
3. Most of the analysis of the smartphone market is focused on the platform battle between Apple and Google. But check out this analysis of handset vendors by Horace Dediu. For all the success that Android handsets are having in the aggregate, Apple is leading in terms of revenue share and absolutely killing it from a profit share perspective with more than half of all handset profits.
4. Expedia keeps evolving its Asian strategy increasing its investment in eLong, the largest Chinese OTA to 56%. Tencent also invested $84M in eLong for a 16% stake with the potential to market the service to its 674M active users.
5. The one thing that Google wants but can’t have is access to Facebook’s data.  And now Microsoft’s got it.  Definitely feels like an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” kind a deal. The question is how deeply Bing will integrate the data into their search results.  Even so will anyone care? Will it be the proverbial “tree in the forest”? Bing’s latest TV ads make me think they may have a winner.
6. Many companies look to analysts like Gartner and Forrester for advice on how to improve their businesses. So here’s a guest’s-eye view of The Fontainbleu’s new mobile app from Forrester eCommerce analyst Julie Ask.  Seems like there’s still work to do.
7. LTE looks like it is going to be the standard for 4G networks (sorry Clear). But unlike GSM it may be very hard to take your LTE phone around the world as there are no fewer than EIGHT “core spectrum bands”. And it looks like spectrum fragmentation is not going away anytime soon, so read this great article discussing the implications of the problem and other reflections from the recent LTE World Summit.
8. The check-in was a novelty when it started, but I gave up on it a while ago as the odds of being the mayor to earn a reward was low. But Starwood may have revived the check in, crediting Starpoints to guests who check in at Starwood properties.
9. Well at least it’s not NFL lockout news, but the American court system is still hard at work. This time, the DOJ is investigating potential anticompetitive practices by the GDSs.
10. Many people get excited about the promise of NFC for mobile payments. I was involved with RFID and NFC a decade ago and am, let’s just say “skeptical”. I think this article does a great job of describing why the recent buzz may be just a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Mobile operating system fragmentation is one I’ve written about before. OS fragmentation is important to developers because it has a major impact in how long you need to support code and also what restrictions you have on bringing new features to market.

Android as an “open” operating system suffers from this more than iOS or even BlackBerry for the simple reason that while they do control the software, they don’t control the hardware manufacturers (although Skyhook may disagree to some extent) or the wireless carriers. Both manufacturers and carriers customize (or distort) the Android interface and device capabilities. That has led to a lag in Android OS upgrades on devices in the marketplace and therefore the costs to support apps in the market and creates time to market challenges for developers.

Netflix is the latest company to struggle with the Android fragmentation challenge. Months after introducing an iOS app (which works on iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches)  they finally introduced an app for Android…or at least 5 Android devices.

The good news is that Google is taking positive steps to reduce the level of fragmentation and streamline the upgrade process, as announced during Google’s IO conference last week.  So hopefully the issues experienced by Netflix will be lessened in the future.

This of course is not limited just to the vagaries of streaming technology. I just got an HTC Thunderbolt…Verizon’s first 4G LTE phone…and the damn thing can’t run the MyVerizon app out of the box. I mean the whole thing is insane.

Please add your thoughts in the comments.

Over the weekend I got a new phone. And started loading up some new apps. Later that day I saw the following tweet from Robert Cole:

A couple of comments. First I love how I’m perceived as an Apple fanboy. I just happen to think they’re doing a lot of things right — and their revenues, market share and profitability seem to indicate I’m not the only one.

But to be clear, I’ve never owned an iPhone before. Actually I upgraded from a (painfully slow) Palm Pre that had barely any apps available for it.  I do have an iPad though which I bought on the very first day, so maybe I’m a bit of a fan.

But I wouldn’t say I’ve gone over to the dark side. Maybe it’s more akin to Luke fighting himself/Darth Vader on Dagobah during his tutelage under Yoda.

I got my HTC Thunderbolt for two reasons. First and foremost I wanted to experience Android first person and draw my own conclusions of what’s good and bad about it.   It’s very easy to get caught up in “religious debates” and wanted to ensure my objectivity.

More and more we’re working with clients who want to support multiple platforms and not just build an iPhone app, so I kinda had to get more familiar with the environment.   Plus I still have my iPad which allows me to participate in the Apple ecosystem. So I’m covered there too.  Secondly I definitely wanted to move to Verizon for better coverage (although Sprint was pretty good), but really I wanted to experience LTE 4G.   Sprint’s WiMAX service has been pretty good, but the numbers I’ve heard about LTE are pretty great and LTE is being built out in Europe too, so I hope it’s kind of a world phone for me.

But let me take a little aside here before I continue. Robert’s tweet kinda upset me for another reason – a breach of trust by TripIt. I never personally tweeted that I downloaded the TripIt app, nor was I ever prompted to do so. Apparently, TripIt automatically tweets when a user downloads their app. That’s not cool. I share a lot about what I do and what I think, but I do it of my own volition. I don’t appreciate companies making those choices for me without my consent. I do love TripIt, but I hope those guys fix this issue ASAP.

First Impressions

To begin with the performance of the device — both the phone itself and the LTE network is a major step up.  As is access to a large number of apps that I was heretofore jealous of everyone else using. But I’ll just touch on a few specifics:

• The HTC Thunderbolt: the build quality is excellent and while it’s much bigger and heavier than I was used to, I became acclimated pretty quickly. In hindsight, perhaps a 4″ screen is a better choice for comfort and battery life. But if you want an LTE phone, there’s not much choice. The huge screen is beautiful. Though not on par with Apple’s Retina Display, it’s very crisp and bright…until you go outside. For all the complaints that Apple’s iPad gets for not being able to use it in the sun, the Thunderbolt is equally useless in good weather. But while the iPad is primarily used inside, mobile phones are “mobile” and very often used outside.
• User Experience/UI: They say that HTC’’s Sense UI is the best of the Android bunch and I will have to say I like it better than Motorola’s MotoBlur. I was tempted to get the upcoming Sprint Nexus S and experience the unvarnished Android interface, but I’m pretty happy with it. Now in comparing Android to Apple’s iOS interface, I think Apple still wins by a large margin, owing in many respects to the consistency between apps. Even the keyboard can be very different. And you have a mix of apps that take an “Android-y” interface approach and others that mimic the Apple experience. I also prefer the use of the “Tab Bar” in iOS rather than the reliance on the “Menu” button on Android devices. These are difference that I’ll probably get used to over time, but still think the iOS approach is more refined.
  • Status Bar/Notifications: I like how this works but I will say that I feel the WebOS notification approach is much better.
  • Widgets: Some of them are OK, but while this is held out as a superior feature of Android versus Apple, I’m not that excited. The most useful ones are those that let you turn certain battery-eating services on and off.
• App Selection: There are hundreds of thousands of app as opposed to the < 10,000 apps that were available on WebOS, so that’s good. Many of the ones I was hoping to use (Dropbox, Twitter/Tweetdeck, TripIt, Skype) were available, but there were definitely some that were not. So no major issues here.
• Impacts of Android Fragmentation: I have written about the challenges of incrementation of the Android ecosystem before from a developer perspective, but let me make a few small points from a consumer perspective:
  • OS Updates: Boy I wish I had a clue when and if this phone will ever get Gingerbread or Honeycomb updates. With Apple you know that when an update is available for one phone it’s available for all. With Android you kinda have to feel comfortable with the version you have because you never know if another is coming. And that’s too bad.
  • Little Differences Matter: As soon as I got the phone I wanted to figure out how to do different things. One of the simple ones was how to take a screen shot of an app so I can use them in presentations and such. With Apple you just hit the Home Button as you hold down the power button and you’re done.  Lo and behold there is no way to do that natively on the phone without rooting the device or hooking it up to your PC and downloading the SDK. That’s too much effort for such a simple thing.  And none of the paid apps worked on my phone (With so few paid apps in the Android market, this needs to be one of them? Ridiculous.).  Apparently the reason why it’s not so simple is because each OEM’s phones are different so you can’t count on having the same button combinations available to create simple shortcuts. Ugh.

So that’s my initial reactions. Do you have an Android phone or an iPhone? Do you agree with my POV to the Android? Please let me know in the comments below.

1. Farelogix is on a roll as they add Delta to their client roster and giving it a clean sweep of all the major NorthAmerican carriers (Air Canada, American Airlines, United/Continental and US Airways).  However, while utilizing a “direct connect” technology, Delta is taking a kinder and gentler approach to airline distribution.
2. The travel distributions wars have hit a whole new level as US Airways files an Anti-Trust suit against Sabre. The heart of the filing is to remove the exclusivity provisions that binds airlines to a single GDS and provide extraordinary market power to the GDS over the airlines.
3. Intel blew past analyst estimates and delivered record earnings. The numbers seemed to show a very healthy PC market, but some have questioned whether there was some channel stuffing of a sort going on. But in any case, Intel does need to make some progress in the mobile space.
4. This is one of the most interesting pieces of analysis I’ve seen in a while. While most people are concerned with the relative share of Android v. iOS, for all of Android’s market success, it’s had almost no direct effect on Google’s stock price, whereas Apple’s fortunes correlate to the iPhone’s success.
5. If Michael Krigsman believes these numbers, it’s good enough for me. But what they say are shocking. It’s frightening that the expectations of 3-out-of-4 IT executives is that their projects will fail before they even start. The reasons all make sense, but that’s part of why we at Ness feel that it’s important to take a product-development approach to all software initiatives.
6. Apple usually exceeds earnings expectations, but this is getting ridiculous – Apple beat Wall Street consensus estimates by more than $1B in revenues and $1.00 EPS for the quarter.  And that was over estimates that were 5% – 10% higher than Apple guidance. TC’s Erick Schonfeld points out that MacBooks, iPhones and China are driving Apple’s performance. The first two are not surprising, but the numbers out of China indicate are pretty amazing.
7. American Airlines put forward disappointing earnings and apparently had an interesting earnings call.  Apparently Wall Street isn’t buying, feeling that no matter all the talk about distribution, there are some fundamental challenges such as high labor costs that can’t be overcome.
8. Concur keeps making moves. The latest is a strategic marketing agreement & $40M investment in Cleartrip, India’s largest online travel agency.
9. Is there a Moore’s Law for solar energy? I certainly hope so. It’s not travel, it’s not software, but it’s definitely worth reading.
10. eBay buys Where.com as they hope to drive more mobile transactions through PayPal.

Over the weekend well-known VC/blogger Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures reiterated his call for companies to shift to a Android-first development stance over iOS. This was instigated by some new stats from Comscore on OS marketshare.

There was a predictable response from the pro-Apple camp. Frankly there are arguments to be made from either side, but most of the valid arguments get lost in the religious fervor that seems to pervade the debate.

But I found a post from Instapaper founder, Marco Arment, that I felt was instructive in contemplating what platform to prioritize. Marco was nice enough to share statistics regarding the OS & device share of Instapaper iPhone users. He started tracking this information so that he could better understand his customers better and know when he could start dropping support of older OS verisons (NB: good best practice to follow). He wrote the post because felt it would be useful info for other developers…exactly the reason I’m sharing it.

And one thing I like about stats is that it’s pretty hard to spin them and therefore they help facilitate a more objective analysis.

OS fragmentation is important because it has a major impact in how long you need to support code and also what restrictions you have on bringing new features to market. Happily mobile devices are far more current than desktops and laptops (says a guy who’s writing this on a PC that’s running Windows XP). But it’s not an insignificant issue.

Marco’s stats show that iPhone and iPad users are very good at upgrading their devices to the latest OS. While his stats are only for his users, they’re in-line with numbers from Bump, so I would say that they’re pretty reliable as a benchmark for you to use.

As you can see almost 6 out of 10 are on the very latest version of iOS, more than 9 out of 10 are on 4.2 and virtually all are on iOS 4.0 or higher. The numbers are similar for the iPad.

Now contrast that with the latest official stats from Android (4/1/11) where 63% of users are on Froyo release (Android 2.2) while only 2.5% are on a version of Gingerbread (2.3) with only Motorola’s XOOM tablet on Honeycomb (3.0). That leaves a full one-third of Android users on Android 2.1 and prior. Now while 2.1 and 2.2 don’t sound like a big difference version-number-wise, the functionality and performance of the two versions are very different indeed.  Froyo brought the much-heralded Adobe Flash compatibility (albeit most Froyo devices today don’t have CPUs to support hardware acceleration in 10.2).

Further many of the Android handsets are hampered from being upgraded to new OS versions by the handset makers who have implemented custom UI mechanisms. So the lag for keeping the Android OS current will always be pretty significant as the only way many Android owners can upgrade their OS is to buy a new phone — meaning it could be a 1-2 year drag as many wait for the contracts to end.

So, just a little more food for thought as you prioritize your mobile development resources. Don’t just think about market share, think about the implications for your development team too.

Lots of tablet/mobile news to kick things off:

1. RIM is struggling to maintain relevancy and apparently co-CEO Jim Balsille’s comments during their earnings call on did not inspire much confidence that they can turn the tide as the stock slid 13%. Matt Drance sums up the reason for the poor response to the earnings call well: “RIM has two CEOs and three COOs. Why is anyone expecting straight answers from a company that can’t even decide who’s in charge?”
2. Samsung launched its new tablet lineup at CTIA, adding an 8.9” consumer version and a 10.1” business oriented tablet to the existing 7” form factor. Both are priced near the iPad2 entry point ($469 and $499) respectively, which is good. What I don’t understand is why launch two new form factors with a $30 spread? From a manufacturing standpoint I don’t see how this advantages Samsung in any way. From a consumer standpoint I can’t see who wouldn’t pony up an additional $30 to get an 11% larger screen and some additional software capabilities (even if you’d never use them). On the whole it is a good step forward for Samsung – the tablets have the new Android Honeycomb OS, benefit from the strong Samsung consumer brand and the pricing is now in the right ballpark. But while maybe this would make me consider the Galaxy over the Motorola XOOM, is there anything here that gives a buyer reason to choose it over an iPad…or the threatened/upcoming introductions of the HP TouchPad or RIM PlayBook? I’m not sold….literally or figuratively.
3. Larry Dignan says that the next big tablet battleground will be in the enterprise.  It’s a good article. If only someone had thought of this before…could anyone have been so prescient?
4. It’s easy to say that companies should leverage the social graph, but it’s another thing to do it. I thought this article on how Foursquare took up the challenge to create a recommendation engine was pretty interesting to read. I’m sure it only scratches the surface, but it gives an inkling of what’s involved.
5. I’ve said before that travel companies are sitting on a boatload of data, but like many industries, have a hard time turning that into actionable information. Thought this was a good article on how BI/decision science could alter hotel revenue management strategies in the future.
6. Rail is a sector that doesn’t get a lot of play in the media except for when President Obama called for an investment in high-speed rail in his SOTU…and of course the predictable calls from the GOP to stop all subsidies to Amtrak. But Kevin May wrote a really good piece on how the rail market is evolving and how companies like Amadeus, Travelport and PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit winner, SilverRail Technologies are increasing their efforts in the sector.
7. Great summary of the state of online travel flash sales. What’s really interesting is the demographics of those visiting these sites.
8. How open is open? Well it seems the definitions are shifting a bit to suit the organizations purpose (shocker) as Google says it won’t release Honeycomb to developers just yet according to this report from BusinessWeek. Timing aside, my bigger beef with Google’s interpretation of “open” is the fact that while they release the code to carriers and device manufacturers to be mucked about with after the fact, they don’t actually allow anyone outside of Google to contribute to the codebase as its being developed. But perhaps I’m picking nits. On a related note, OpenAXIS is adding “membership” to the definition of open.
9. Speaking of definitions, it seems multi-tenancy is still kinda murky to some. This should remind you that it’s still important to understand your software providers’ architecture.
10. SITA breaks ATPCOs monopoly on airline fare in the US and Canada. It should be interesting to see what innovations SITA brings to the space and how ATPCO responds.

Lots of mobile platform announcements this week and that’s even before the Mobile World Congress kicked off. But some big travel industry news too, leading off with…

1. ITA Software renewed its agreement with Orbitz thorugh 2015. This is the first contract that was renewed since the announced acquisition by Google.  This should definitely help clear the way for DOJ approval.
2. Nokia chooses Microsoft for future smartphone OS platform in a move that wasn’t all that surprising.  Well except maybe to this ex-Nokia guy who is more bitter than 4-day old coffee grinds. Some may argue that Nokia should have licensed Android as WP7 has a teeney-tiney market share, but could Nokia have competed on an even field with HTC, Samsung and Motorola selling a modestly different version of the same phone?  At least being one of the few with a WP7 phone gives them a chance to appear different in the marketplace. Scoble agrees. Then again, what HP unveiled the other day makes this an even more difficult task.  Either way, the markets didn’t react well to the news.
3. Many people, including myself, have been advocating for HTML5 and promoting the mobile web over apps. But TechCrunch’s MG Seigler points out that while it all sounds nice, apps are still where the action is.
4. HP re-launches the WebOS platform it got when it bought Palm. All of the elements that make WebOS a delight (I do own an original Palm Pre) are there and improved upon. The only problem is that WebOS has almost no apps to speak of (see previous item). Getting developer mindshare is going to be a problem. And while they brought on a high-powered guy to take on the challenge, it might only be enough to leapfrog RIM. But that’s a pretty low bar. BTW, in retrospect, I think my first take on the HP/Palm acquisition was pretty on target.
5. Traditional web search is increasingly important and feels more and more like a system to be gamed – fairly or not. Here’s an interesting article in the NY Times that delves into the ‘black hat’ shenanigans that JC Penny used to dominate search. Fair tactics? No. But great results as Penny had one of its best recent quarters. The most interesting question about what happened is posed on the last page of the article: “Is it possible that Google was willing to countenance an extensive black-hat campaign because it helped one of its larger advertisers?”
6. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber looks into his crystal ball and sees what Apple will do next in response to the recent announcements from Google, HP, Microsoft and RIM.
7. Cloud provider Rackspace bought Anso Labs, one of the key figures behind the open source PaaS project known as OpenStack, also championed by Rackspace. Many rushed to wonder whether Rackspace will dominate the OpenStack community the way some complain Oracle and IBM have done with Java. Personally I don’t think so. I think Rackspace sees this as a way to maintain leadership in the cloud space and create mindshare with developers.  I believe OpenStack could be a really valuable platform for those looking to move to the cloud, especially those that may deploy on different IaaS providers across multiple geographies.
8. Mary Meeker who was the stat queen while at Morgan Stanley keeps the info flowing at Kleiner, Perkins. Check out her latest presentation.
9. After much pomp and circumstance, Amadeus finally sells Opodo to private equity firms AXA and Permira in a deal valued at €450M.
10. Google touts their new WebM CODEC as the open source future of web video…until MPEG-LA questions whether WebM is based on patents they control. It’s telling that thus far Google hasn’t agreed to indemnify others who use the WebM codec. As an old Vorlon friend of mine used to say: “And so it begins”.

The question is no longer whether or not to have a mobile strategy, but how quickly you can implement it. And while the mobile web can address many platforms, there are still advantages to developing native apps. And so when I talk to clients, the discussion quickly turns to what order should you prioritize your mobile development dollars.

Well many, including influential VC Fred Wilson, have anointed Google’s Android platform as the eventual (if not already) winner.  Just last week  Nielsen projected that Android will have nearly twice the market share as the iPhone. Do you need more proof? You can find numbers from ComScore, Millenial Media and Canalys to support this point of view. Others just point to Android’s sales performance on the Verizon, Sprint and T-mobile networks proved that Android was the better platform than the iPhone, the one that had all the momentum.

All of this may have seemed credible until the iPhone went on pre-sale at Verizon. Not only did the pre-orders sell out in 2 hours…before 5am and set a record for most phones sold in any launch on Verizon’s network – but it happened based only on the response from existing Verizon customers. Some of this is because smartphones still only represent a minority share of Verizon customers (see graphic below), so perhaps there were a lot of people waiting for the iPhone to buy their first smartphone.

New research from uSamp indicates that more than half the existing smartphone customers at Verizon plan to switch to the iPhone…including 44% of Android users. I can’t wait to see what happens on Thursday when Verizon opens its doors for disgruntled AT&T customers.  It should be interesting to revisit all these market share predictions in a few months.

So yeah, the iPhone is still the king and where you probably want to put your mobile development dollars first.

NB: Ness Software Product Labs’ recent whitepaper “Five Steps to a Successful Mobile Strategy for the Travel Industry” can be downloaded here.