Amazingly, nobody has yet pointed out a severe usage limitation on Apple's iPad that surely will cause grief with the very first reviewers. I'll get right to the bottom line: Just like the iPod Touch, the iPhone and most or even all other smartphones, the iPad lacks multiple user profile logins, including any "Guest" login.  Also reports are that orders are dropping after a spike on Friday.  Think of the iPad as one big iPod Touch or iPhone. Once you've entered the password, you're in. And I mean in! You have complete access to all emails, instant messages, the address book and calendar. Contrast this with a laptop: On a PC, you may have, say, four different user logins (father, mother, son and daughter) and one generi

The future of the mobile industry is pretty clear- it’s all about data. Data revenues have allowed U.S. carriers to keep subscriber ARPU’s relatively stable in the face of 30% declines in voice revenues over the past five years. Look no further than Verizon Wireless’ recent announcement to allow unlimited Skype-to-Skype voice calls over its 3G network to see the future revenue prospects of voice, now a commodity service. Data revenues, in contrast, are expected to continue their explosive growth, more than doubling by 2013 according to a recent Telecommunications Industry Association report. It’s no coincidence that over the same period smartphone sales are projected to account for more than 40% of all wireless devices sold domesti

[Editor’s Note: Pay attention here – chances are that if you do, you’ll be more interested in the iPhone as well. –mrh] It feels like it’s been more than two months since the iPad was announced. The masterful PR craze that preceded it was only matched by the public backlash. Now that the waters are quieter, I would like to ponder a little about our upcoming iLife. Do we really need a tablet? Tablets are nothing new. Back in 2004, when I was still studying, I was the proud owner of a convertible Acer Tablet PC. I took notes, read comics, ebooks and watched series during class(muted and with subtitles of course!). In 2006, Intel introduced the Viiv, which was another attempt at introducing the tablets to the mainstream consume

As reported on Friday I was reporting a huge announcement from Cisco that was dubbed "The Internet will change forever" hype. If you want to track the live blogging of the announcement go here from Scott Raynovich. It was the general opinion of all journalists that this made Cisco look bad for overhyping this announcement.  TelecomTV was very critical of this overhype. I reported five major elements that Cisco was going to announce an end-to-end network play which would either will be announced individually or collectively as one big “grand” vision. Here is what I heard and posted last Friday Here is what appears to be breaking next week: 1) An “AppleTV” style cable set top or edge consumer box based on their Scientific

By 2014, annual global mobile data traffic will reach 3.6 exabytes per month. Globally, businesses and consumers will be transferring the equivalent of billions of DVDs each month. What’s driving that incredible growth? What does it mean to service providers? Are users worldwide becoming mobile data megalomaniacs? Read on to find out. Before I get into details, I’d just like to point out that a lot of this data comes from the Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Forecast. A great summary of Cisco VNI research is here, along with a helpful mobile data forecast whitepaper, can be found here. Video is, well, huge, and getting ginormous So, what’s going on? Let’s take a look at a key driver of the pending data delu

Update: Cisco Announces upgrade but no set top box and no telepresence. Three out of five of this report announced by Cisco. Reactions were not that favorable. Update (March 8 2010): Cisco's Future Is Already Here -- Looks like Verizon, Juniper Networks, NEC, and Finistar are demonstrating trials on the eve of Cisco's big announcement reported by FierceTelcom, Information Week, and released by Verizon today. The announcement came as Cisco was preparing a major announcement for Tuesday, believed to be its entry in the 100G race. Google has already said it plans to test 100G networks in selected regions. You can take the 100G piece out of the Cisco equation and the notion that Verizon will be standing with Cisco at their podium.

Last night I attended a small private briefing held in San Francisco by Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 team. My expectations were very low. I was pleasantly surprised. Microsoft has some work to do and they know it. They had a humble and confident swagger. This morning it hit me. This is the browser war playing out in mobile but 14 years later. More on that below but back to the meeting last night. From my perspective Charlie Kindel (@ckindel) delivered three big messages 1) Phone 7 is an absolute consumer product, 2) it's easy to develop on and will be great platform for developers to "thrive" on 3) Microsoft corporate gave the Windows Phone7 team carte blanche to do whatever it takes to build a great product - which means don't

Not wanting Pennsylvania to be the next reception nightmare, an AT&T rep has contacted me with some promising 2010 numbers: In 2010, AT&T plans the following enhancements to its wireless network: - Pennsylvania: adding more than 60 cell sites, upgrading nearly 400 to 3G technology. - New Jersey: adding nearly 10 cell sites, upgrading more than 5 to 3G technology. - Delaware: adding of nearly half a dozen cell sites. - AT&T employees more than 3,200 employees in the Commonwealth. This looks very promising indeed. My Blackberry on AT&T does the oddest things sometimes and I had clients in Philadelphia say having reception underground on the train is cool, but, having clear reception at home would be

In a post by Richard Wong from Accel Partners he talks about and shares his opinion on the Mobile space specifically fragmentation. It's a solid post worth reading. I agree with most of it except Ray's point about unifying force that he says will never come. Mobile Innovation Cycle I've talked about our mobile innovation cycle model in a previous post when Millennial Media bought a SF analytic startup. There is a massive data opportunity in mobile.  Data drives innovation and as I've said before data is the new developer kit. Here are my favorite quotes from his post: Mobile data is on fire. Despite a few false starts, we are now in the midst of a transformative “Open Mobile 3rd Wave”. The smartest entrepren

As we prepare to venture over to Austin for SXSWi I'm prepping my Android HTC Hero with all the latest geo-location apps to help me stay on top of all of the activities. Last year seemed to be about what was coming and this year seems be all about 'where we're at right now.' Yes, Gowalla, Foursquare, britekite, plancast and A/R apps are going to have a big week and be all over the news. Yes, we've seen this coming for awhile but we're here and we should take heed now. The world is closing in around us, our meta-data and our social graphs are getting packed in close. I'm all for discovering hidden communities, great eating establishments and tiny music stores when I'm on the road but I'm getting pulled in too many directions. If we're to s