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.

Lot of important stuff last week, but the most awaited announcement…of maybe the past 2 years…leads the list:

1. Many prayers have finally been answered as Verizon announced that the iPhone will be coming to their network in early February. It is anticipated that legions of dissatisfied AT&T customers will switch, but the bigger potential is with the millions of feature phone owners on the network.
2. There’s no way that GDSs can support airlines ancillary services until they do. For all of American’s posturing that GDS (and specifically Travelport) technology isn’t up to the task and the economics of working through intermediaries no longer make sense, Travelport and Air Canada strike a deal.
3. Google, in the spirit of “open”, decides to drop support for H.264 in their Chromium browser in favor of their own WebM CODEC. The move is pretty self serving, a direct competitive move against Apple as they try to hide behind fears of never-yet-levied royalty payments from MPEG LA. All while H.264 makes up two-thirds of video on the web. Yet for all Google’s posturing for “Open” they continue to prop up Flash, a decidedly closed technology.  But not to worry, plug-ins are here to save the day (Really? Plug-ins? In 2011?). WTF. MG Siegler pretty much covers it.
4. After 23 years, Bob Muglia seems to have been forced out of Microsoft. Josh Greenbaum believes that the changing of the guard is very much tied to the changing of Microsoft’s business and move to Azure-based services and the rise of importance of the Dynamics ERP suite to Microsoft.
5. Concur buys TripIt in a deal worth up to $120M.
6. In a somewhat surprising turn of events, the DOJ looks like it’s going to file a challenge to Google’s acquisition of ITA Software. Does that mean the deal won’t go through? Not at all. A similar process was followed with Google’s acquisition of AdMob. But interesting nonetheless.
7. In related news, American has chosen ITA’s Inventory Control solution, which will get folded into the overall Passenger Service System, Jetstream, that HP is building for the airline.  So ITA has one piece of HP’s PSS and HP licensed Pegasus’ RezView system for another. Hmmm. I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’.
8. MySpace cuts almost half their jobs and is officially on the block. The only question…who would buy them?
9. Intuit continues its push into mobile payments and focus on small business, offering their GoPayment system for free for a limited time.  The mobile payments space is estimated to exceed $600B in 2014. PayPal is the current leader in the space having processed more than $500M in 2010.
10. Intel and Nvidia finally settle their patent dispute with a cross-licensing agreement that will pay Nvidia $1.5B over the next six years.  That just added the bad news at AMD which culminated in the firing of their CEO.

Better late than never. Here’s the best from Christmas and New Years’ week:

1. An excellent interview of TSA Chief John Pistole on how they are approaching airport security. This is a much more nuanced point of view than what one would expect from the TSA in light of enhanced pat-down protocols that seem more suited to “Cinemax After Dark” than an airport in broad daylight. Great stuff on risk mitigation v. elimination, proportionality of response, scalability of approach, and profiling.
2. Will Google be your next wireless carrier? Forget handsets, Google may be looking for more, and they certainly have helped themselves if they do go down that route with their lobbying efforts to put more holes in wireless net neutrality rules than in Swiss cheese.
3. It’s not $6B in cash, nor is it a $6B valuation, but Groupon finally got their money – and importantly retained control of their own destiny – with a $950M funding round.
4. And on a related note…while many companies have tried to copy the Groupon model, perhaps TravelZoo is better positioned than others to succeed.
5. Well now that Skype is available on iOS, is T-Mobile going to take all those Facetime/WiFi ads off TV? They are pretty annoying anyway.
6. Wither WiMAX? Clearwire, the leading provider of WiMAX services looks to be in financial trouble. Om Malik wonders whether Sprint can afford to…or not to…buy Clearwire if it looks like Clearwire will fail. Sprint CEO Dan Hesse has bet the company’s 4G strategy on Clearwire (I made my own much, much smaller bet on Sprint 4G), so he probably has little option than to push all his chips in the middle of the table.
7. Yapta, which provides price tracking for hotel and air, is more than half-way to completing its $6.4M funding round.
8. There were a number of articles written after a report in Fortune declared that $100 unsubsidized Android smartphones were on their way, with some declaring that this will be the end of the iPhone.  Except for one thing…there are already Android smartphones close to $100 on the market today and the specs touted by Broadcom describe products that seem closer to the iPhone 3G/3GS than the iPhone 4 or the iPhone 5 that will be shipping by the time these products will. Anyway, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber provides an excellent perspective.
9. One of the better, detailed reviews of what the FCC ruling on Net Neutrality really means.
10. Kinda cool, kinda scary, but iPads are in the cockpit.

Well that was an interesting week: HP’s Hurd and Google’s Wave are out (and IHMO Wave had the more egregious indiscretions), Travelport may finally revive their IPO and a few more things.

1. Is a Travelport IPO in the very near future?
2. LAN Airlines chooses Orbitz over Expedia for dynamic packaging.
3. HP CEO Mark Hurd resigns amidst sexual harassment investigation. The wording of the statement appears as if he admits inappropriate behavior, which if you read it quickly would seem to admit guilt to the charges against him. But it seems as if he’s clear of the sexual misconduct charges, but made several other indiscretions which sealed his fate.
4. Excellent article from GigaOM on the FCC, Net Neutrality and “Reclassification”. Once again it looks like the consumer is screwed by politicians and big business. Interestingly, Google seems to have signed on to the concept of charging premium fees for bandwidth as part of it’s partnership with Verizon.  Pretty surprising move for a company who’s motto is “Don’t be evil”.
5. Google Wave, the hyped piece of software that was going to change the way we collaborate is no more. Remember when you had to beg to get a Wave invite…then found the interface to be confusing and none of your friends or colleagues were on it?  Good times.
6. Apple sacks mobile hardware development head Mark Papermaster, ostensibly as part of the fallout from Antennagate. Now if only his name was Antennamaster things would be very different today
7. Why does the travel industry seem to hate the people at TechCrunch? While many aspects of Michael Arrington’s rant about his recent Delta flight resonated with me, it doesn’t hold a candle to the hilarity of MG Siegler’s “My Bloody Valentine” post about how Expedia screwed up his romantic weekend.
8. The iPhone-to-Verizon rumors are picking up speed again, as it appears Apple has ordered a boatload of CDMA chipsets. But what if this is really for Sprint, rather than Verizon who looks to be getting deeper in bed with Google every day. Sprint only has the HTC EVO and Samsung Galaxy Android phones and has a gaping hole in their lineup where the Palm Pre used to be.
9. OpenTable profits are waaay up. But perhaps more importantly, they’re launching a Groupon-esque service called Spotlight that can provide meals up to half off normal prices. Will other parts of the travel and hospitality industry start adopting this model to drive volume?
10. After four years, Amadeus announces its next generation faring and pricing platform. Tnooz wonders if it’s enough to take on the new breed of fare tool vendors.

A lot of stuff happened while I was OpenTravel’s 2010 Advisory Forum in Seattle this past week:

1. I’d be remiss if I didn’t start with the successful IPO of Amadeus (AMA.MC), the largest GDS and leader in global travel technology solutions…and Ness Software Product Labs’ signature client in the travel technology space.
2. Apple buys Siri.  It’s not just mobile-web search, Siri also has the ability to learn preferences and not just provide better results back, but help complete activities or business processes like making dinner reservations or booking a flight.  It should be interesting to see how the iPhone experience evolves as Siri deepens the integration with iPhone OS.
3. Salesforce.com and VMWare announce VMForce.  Looks like Salesforce finally admitted that APEX was holding back the Force.com Platform-as-a-Service business and partnered with VMWare to enable direct Java-based development on the rest of the Force.com infrastructure. Good analysis by Enterprise Irregulars Phil Wainwright, Bob Warfield and Brian Sommer.
4. 5 reasons iPhone v. Android isn’t Mac v. Windows. Well said.
5. Another Top 5 list.  This time it’s the untapped or under-exploited opportunities in travel.  Mobile payments, re-booking top the list, but read on to see what other opportunities lie in wait.
6. Steve Jobs’ official position on Apple v. Adobe Flash.  Nothing terribly new (or not already said by Daring Fireball’s John Gruber), but if it’s written by Steve…and he gives it almost 1700 words, you should at least read it.
7. Excellent analysis of what Apple’s announcement of iAds will mean.
8. Tech Crunch’s Michael Arrington announces that with the recent announcements at the f8 conference we’re officially in the ‘age of Facebook’.
9. Forrester’s JP Gownder offers an opinion on why consumers will pay more for products and uses the Mac as a shining example.  I only have two issues with the analysis.  First I think that Gownder mistakenly equates repeat purchase with brand loyalty.  But more importantly, the piece reads as if the three categories can have similar impact. As I’m in the middle of Steven Sinek’s “Start With Why”, I believe “self-selection” (as Gownder calls it) reason is by far the most influential. But if you read the book, self-selection has a lot to do with whether or not a company has a compelling “why”.
10. On top of the Amadeus IPO, two big mergers in the travel industry:  Hertz buys Dollar Thrifty and United and Continental Airlines are set to merge under the United moniker. And it increasingly looks like Google will buy ITA.  A lot of activity for sure.

I just got the Pre on Sprint and am pretty happy with it. Definitely think the value package ($20/unlimited data + email + text) Sprint put together is better and less expensive than what is available from AT&T or Verizon for the Blackberry (both effectively require $50/month to enable the phones) and after all the griping I hear about coverage, I took the plunge.  On top of that, I think the Pre has some great features, particularly multi-tasking, layered calendars and Palm Synergy which seamlessly consolidates contact information across multiple address books (e.g. Outlook, Gmail and Yahoo).

Much has been written about the sure-to-fail marriage between 2 also rans in Sprint and Palm (see here and here), but I don’t think it has to do with the viability or scale of the companies themselves. The real concern about the success or failure of the Pre in my mind is tied to the number of apps available for the platform. In many ways I think the device itself has advantages over the iPhone, but 250 apps v. 100,000 isn’t much of a competition. If Palm is able to get more apps out quickly, at least to the point that it approaches the 10,000 that’s available for Android, it could actually compete more effectively.

Would you consider the Pre versus the iPhone, Droid or Blackberry?