Hasta La Gadget!

A new Gartner study reports that the iPhone’s market share doubled from 5.3 percent in Q1 2008 to 10.8 percent in Q1 2009. That’s amid a 12.7 percent gain in smartphone sales–to 36.4 million worldwide–and an overall drop of 8.6 percent for all cell phone sales during the same period. Research in Motion, makers of the BlackBerry, also saw tremendous gains, from 13.3 percent share in Q1 2008 to 19.9 percent in Q1 2009.

AT&T is contemplating offering cheaper data plans for its smartphones, including the iPhone.

The telecom company is thinking about offering a limited data package, which would cost less than its current unlimited data plans. For example, AT&T currently offers iPhone 3G users an unlimited data plan priced at $30 per month.

“Right now we continue to study what is the best thing that is available, not just from an iPhone point of view, but what you can do to stimulate additional demand,” Ralph de la Vega, the head of AT&T Mobility, told Reuters.

Clearly, AT&T is aiming to attract frugal consumers unwilling to pay the monthly rates of a smartphone. With a voice plan and unlimited data plan combined, the least an iPhone customer can pay is about $70 per month. Thus, a reduced, limited data plan is targeting those who feel that’s too much to pay for a phone.

While this may sound like good news, we’re skeptical a reduced, limited data plan would benefit consumers. By default, the iPhone automatically connects to the internet to check your e-mail, among other activities, even when it’s asleep. Thus, you’d have to frequently turn the internet connection on and off to avoid surpassing whatever limit AT&T imposes so as not to pay additional charges. And if you’re not careful, you could easily end up shelling out well over the $30 you’d normally pay for an unlimited data plan.

A better way to reduce monthly data costs? I like TechCrunch writer MG Siegler’s suggestion: Get rid of those text-messaging (SMS) fees. Text messages are indeed data, and yet we pay additional fees (e.g., at least $5 per month for 200 texts for the iPhone 3G) just to send them — so AT&T’s unlimited data plan isn’t truly an unlimited data plan. Lump unlimited text messaging into the unlimited data plan, and there you have it — a less expensive smartphone package.

Of course, we doubt AT&T would ever do that. Text messages cost nearly nothing for telecom companies, so might as well keep making consumers pay for nothing. Cruel world, isn’t it?

See Also:

• Text Messages Cost Carriers Nothing
• 3G iPhone Unlimited Data Plan Will Cost $30 Per Month, But You Can …
• Colombians Charged Up the Wazoo for iPhone 3G
• Analyst’s Speculation: AT&T Will Decrease iPhone Monthly Plan …

Photo: Jason-Morrison/Flickr

It’s a sad state of things in the smartphone arena, folks. Nokia can’t even get its forthcoming N86 out of the door in official fashion before the cloning labs in China push out a suitable impostor. Of course, it’s not as if this hasn’t happened to Nokia before, but with such an anti-knockoff mentality, you think it’d take a little action to make the nightmare stop. Or maybe it secretly adores the attention — yeah, that has to be it.

[Thanks, Jason]

Filed under: Cellphones

Keepin’ it real fake, part CCXII: Nokia’s N86 cloned ahead of release originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 May 2009 13:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Palm has been cagey about when its next-generation smartphone, the Palm Pre, will be coming out. Now the normally reliable New York Times cites “people briefed on the company’s plans” who say that the Pre will be released the first week of June.

If it comes out then, it will be facing stiff summer competition, from — among others — a revamped iPhone (also expected to be announced in June, at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference) and Samsung’s first Android-based smartphone, the i7500.

And it will have to sell at least a million units to be considered a “hit,” the Times reports.

Our take: It will have to sell a lot more than that, because Palm has staked the company on this ambitious phone. The company fanned the flames with over-the-top hype at CES, preserved a nearly Apple-like shroud of secrecy around the phone since then, and has only now allowed what we assume are a series of carefully staged “sightings” around the San Francisco Bay Area. Result: Geeks are anticipating this phone more eagerly than anything since, well, the first-generation iPhone.

Cellphone Makers Hope for a Blockbuster Summer – NYTimes.com.

Photo credit: Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com

This week’s Gadget Lab podcast zones in on multimedia players, starting with the new Cool-er e-book reader — a lighter, slimmer and cheaper alternative to Amazon’s Kindle. Then Danny Dumas weighs in on Sony’s new Series-X Walkman player. No, it doesn’t play cassette tapes; it’s actually an MP3 player with built-in FM and Slacker service.

Treading into the software world, we discuss the latest iPhone App Store drama. Apple rejected Me So Holy, an iPhone app that edits your mug to resemble a portrait of none other than Jesus Christ. Perhaps someone at Apple was offended? And in other App Store news, the new SlingPlayer iPhone app, which streams video from a Slingbox player plugged into your TV, can only work on Wi-Fi! Why? Because AT&T doesn’t want iPhone users hogging its 3G service watching TV.

Other than crippling SlingPlayer, AT&T neutered the Nokia E71x smartphone by removing a really cool button we loved in the phone’s predecessor: a toggle button. Danny tops off the podcast with an emo rant about the loss of this wonderful feature.

This week’s podcast features Dylan Tweney, Danny Dumas, Priya Ganapati and Brian Chen, with audio engineering by Fernando Cardoso.

If the embedded player above doesn’t work, you can download the Gadget Lab podcast #74 MP3 file.

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