Thursday, February 14, 2013

The Mobile Tech Slog begins and your refrigerator may be watching you

Read this an more in the February issue of my Technically Speaking newsletter here.

Here's the scorecard for the looming Mobile Battles

The "front four" include Microsoft, Google, Apple and Blackberry; all have modern mobile operating systems. The second tier includes dozens of hardware companies hoping to jump on the right OS bandwagon - or bandwagons. Samsung is often considered the top Android phone and tablet maker in terms of volume, profit and quality but they also use Microsoft's operating system for some phones. Few mobile device makers make substantial profits so the herd could start thinning pretty quickly.

You can tell the road ahead is shaky. HP just announced they will make an Android tablet. Microsoft is helping to bail out Dell even as they introduce their own competing Surface tablets. Amazon blocks Kindle users from the Android Play store and Samsung introduces a Siri imitator that bypasses Google search. Gonna get nasty!

Exciting new mobile product from Minneapolis based Canopy

This company got a great report in Forbes Magazine when exhibiting its Sensus multitouch iPhone case at the Consumer Electronics Show last month. Cases are a dime a dozen or a dime a hundred but this one is unique. Read about this new product in this Forbes report and try to imagine the possibilities. I personally use a Canopy tripod mount iPhone case all the time.