There was a video I thought was interesting at http://www.newsy.com/videos/smarter_phone_wars/ about the global response to the Pre-iPhone 3.0 battle.

3.0 delivered on almost all fronts. If they delivered background processes, and somehow increased battery life in the next iPhone significantly enough, it would have been a complete game over. Nevertheless, their implementation of push notifications seem to be very well thought out and makes it possible for current generation iPhones to work well with 3.0, which is significant and does make sense over background processes (for now at least). There’s so little room left for competitors to pick on, as compared to 2.0 which really is kinda crippled in many ways (IMO).

I think android (and palm pre if it doesn’t turn out to be a flop) still has some fighting chance left, but I agree its gonna be very hard now if 3.0 works smoothly as intended. I still see huge potential in the android marketplace if they manage to solve or minimize compatibility issues between devices, but as always the brand power of apple is going to be hard to beat.

The next big chance for a turnaround would most likely be when major hardware/architectural changes in mobile devices start to get released commercially (OMAP4, Tegra, micro fuel cell technology), that’s going to totally change how mobile devices are used in our lives. Devices are going to get much more powerful, have a few times more battery life, and that could happen as soon as the end of this year or the middle next year. I see a chance for apple to fall from the top if apple fails to adjust well enough to those new advancements, or if competitors are able to capitalize fast with a product before apple can react. Still, its a slim chance, as apple would probably have gained a huge majority of the market by then, making the iPhone even more attractive and harder to give up.

Unfortunately, thanks to the App store, that only got successful thanks to Apple’s brand at the beginning, the iPhone’s audience is now so broad, it meets the needs of anyone from casual users to power users, potentially taking over the ENTIRE smart phone market, thus endangering Palm and their new WebOS platform.

Thus even if Palm did provide a great platform and store, developers would still think twice about spending time and effort to develope for the WebOS instead of the iPhone.

What Palm did is essentially ‘improving’ what the previous iPhone software can do but what it lacked are ground breaking ideas, a compelling platform for developers, a web store ready to rock and roll and lastly, I think… getting back it’s core users.

From the keynote, you can see how much Apple has answered consumer’s call. Everybody rejoice. Developers loves it too, Apple worked their socks off just so they can develop apps with minimal fuss. It goes a long way when Apple continues to satisfy both ends and everyone else plays catch up.

Gosh… “Viscous” cycle… How did Chemistry get involved into this…

A positive version of a vicious cycle is called the virtuous cycle, I think. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuous_circle_and_vicious_circle

Btw, I think you missed the “i” in the “vicious”.