McGuire’s Law

PC World has come out with their list of the top 10 cellphones on the market in the U.S. I guess this helps explain why the Epic (#1) and Evo (#2) are so popular with customers that they still aren’t available for Sprint employees like me to buy.

If you aren’t yet a Sprint customer, now might be a great time to take advantage of my employee referral info to save some money. Go to http://www.sprint.com/everythingplus and enter my e-mail (russ.s.mcguire@sprint.com) and my id (383) and start enjoying the power of either one of the top 2 cellphones on the market today.

Standard disclaimer: don’t take from my selections, ordering, headlines, etc. any indications of the interests or plans of my employer (if you do, you’ll undoubtedly be disappointed when they don’t play out.)

• Report: Amazon, looking beyond Kindle, considers making phones
• Worldwide Mobile Device Sales Grew 13.8% in Q2, But Competition Drove Prices Down
• A Planet of Connected Devices
• Smartphone Bloodbath: Report Card at Half Point of Year 2010 for all major brands
• From Hot to Not: How Component Shortages Will Stifle the Smartphone Market
• Android Users Are the New Mobile Data Hogs
• RIM’s Flickering Torch Should Signal Defeat For The “Consumer-Grade” Blackberry
• RIM Must Switch To Android Now, Before It’s Too Late
• Handset exclusivity - One year at the FCC
• RIM is the New Palm
• Android Nation?

Standard disclaimer: don’t take from my selections, ordering, headlines, etc. any indications of the interests or plans of my employer (if you do, you’ll undoubtedly be disappointed when they don’t play out.)

• iPhone And Android Are Cool, But These “Dumb” Messaging Phones Are Still Selling Like Crazy
• Data Hungry Droids Grow Verizon Revenues
• BlackBerry’s Era May Be Ending
• Motorola’s Jha: Android will eclipse Apple’s iPhone
• From Hot to Not: How Component Shortages Will Stifle the Smartphone Market
• When phones are too big for pockets
• The Galaxy S paradox
• Mobile Phone Demand Expands 14.5% as Market Fragments
• Samsung’s margins shrink despite rising handset shipments
• Appraising the global wireless handset market in the second quarter
• Android Sales Overtake iPhone in the U.S.
• Understanding Smartphone Market Share? Battle not for phones, is for platform!
• It’s Too Late for Microsoft To Build Its Own Handset
• Why iPhone Strategy is Wrong and Has to Change Soon

Standard disclaimer: don’t take from my selections, ordering, headlines, etc. any indications of the interests or plans of my employer (if you do, you’ll undoubtedly be disappointed when they don’t play out.)

• No Nexus Two coming from Google
• Who Came Up With The Name Superphone? Not Google (hey, I was there!)
• Lets do Bloodbath update, Samsung Bada, Samsung Galaxy, Samsung Beam.. oh and some iPhone, Google, Nokia too
• Soon We’ll All Be Hotspots
• Apple and HTC lead charge as smartphone market looks set to grow and grow
• Explosive Changes in Consumer Demand Shake Up Smart Phone Industry
• So the Reality Check on Apple’s iPhone Complaints Numbers and Dropped Calls
• Smartphone surge continues unabated in Q2
• Nokia Is Still Lost in the Woods
• The Potential for Smartphone Platforms if All Phones Become Smartphones
• Smartphone shipments jump 43 percent

Standard disclaimer: don’t take from my selections, ordering, headlines, etc. any indications of the interests or plans of my employer (if you do, you’ll undoubtedly be disappointed when they don’t play out.)

• Life and death of Microsoft Kin: the inside story
• Intel Smartphones Coming in 2011, But Consumers Won’t Care
• Cisco unveils the Cius tablet but don’t expect much competition with iPad
• AdMob Data Illustrates Why Feature Phones Aren’t a Strategy for the Future
• Why Carriers Still Hold the Key to Handset Sales
• Nokia: It’s About Apps, It’s No Longer About Selling Devices
• Droid X launch bits pt2: Motoblur (as we knew it), is dead. Beginning of the end for custom UIs?
• In the coming smartphone shakeout, Android has the momentum
• App stores are not enough
• When Will Nokia’s Smartphone Transition End?
• The Wide-open Door to the Mobile Enterprise
• Analyst: T-Mobile struggling to sell Garminfone
• Kin’s seven deadly sins

Standard disclaimer: don’t take from my selections, ordering, headlines, etc. any indications of the interests or plans of my employer (if you do, you’ll undoubtedly be disappointed when they don’t play out.)

• Get Over Your Gigahertz: Don’t Turn Smartphones Into PCs
• Fujitsu and Toshiba to merge cell phone units, go international
• Nokia’s Troubles Deepen: As Devs Flee Platform, Handset Maker Cuts Forecast
• The Recipe for a Successful Smartphone Is Getting Bland
• Searching for the Android Disneyland
• Motorola Betting Billions on New Handset Spinoff
• Smartphone wars update mid June: iPhone 4 sales stumbles, Nokia profit warning, Microsoft OS confusion
• How to Build a Popular Mobile Device
• The fightback starts now
• 5 Lessons Learned From the Microsoft Kin Debacle
• Doesn’t Smell Right: Microsoft kills the Kin

For years, we’ve talked about the cellphone as the swiss army knife.

And I’ve found the analogy to be really on-target. I’ve told the story many times about how I used to (pre-9/11) always carry a small knife in my pocket that had a small pair of scissors and a tiny screw driver. There were times when I found myself trying to demo the latest telecom applications at a customer site or a trade show and I’d use those scissors to strip a wire and the screw driver to lock down a connection. (Scary, I know…)

But, in reality, those scissors and that tiny screw driver were a poor excuse for real tools. They were incredibly valuable because I had them with me, but given my druthers, I’d rather use a real stripping tool or real screw driver.

Cellphones have been the same way. You can use your cellphone as a camera. You can use your cellphone to watch TV or movies. You can use them as an eReader. You can use your cellphone as a navigation device. And your cellphone is incredibly valuable for those purposes (relative to its quality at each) because it is always with you. (That’s a big part of McGuire’s Law of Mobility, by the way…)

But in reality, given the choice, most people would rather use a “real” camera, a “real” TV, a “real” book or eReader, or a “real” navigation device.

The EVO 4G is the first phone that really changes that reality. Its true broadband connectivity, high powered processor, 8MP camera, huge screen, and HDMI output make it truly competitive as a “real” product in each of those categories. Add in stereo Bluetooth, 720p video recording, an additional front facing camera for video chatting, hot spot capability, a digital compass, and all the applications in the Android marketplace, and suddenly the EVO becomes the ultimate “swiss army knife” capable of credibly replacing a broad range of products.

Wow.

Standard disclaimer: don’t take from my selections, ordering, headlines, etc. any indications of the interests or plans of my employer (if you do, you’ll undoubtedly be disappointed when they don’t play out.)

• RIM stays top dog in OS battle, Android tops Apple for No. 2
• The real reason Android is outselling the iPhone: Android is everywhere
• Opinion - It’s Time For Google To Kill The Failed Nexus One
• 4 Lessons Learned From Google’s Nexus One Store Closure
• Android’s daily shipment rate jumps up to 65,000 per day
• Smartphone Wars: Battle looks set to go to many rounds before victors declared
• Is Android fragmented or is this the new rate of innovation?
• It’s time to experiment with device pricing
• Hey, HP, the Smartphone Market Is Calling
• Is Steve Ballmer’s Fate Tied to Microsoft’s Handset Efforts?
• The Latest Trends in Business-Class Smartphones

Standard disclaimer: don’t take from my selections, ordering, headlines, etc. any indications of the interests or plans of my employer (if you do, you’ll undoubtedly be disappointed when they don’t play out.)

• Motorola crashes and burns, now falls from 6th to 8th biggest phone maker - behind RIM and Apple
• Most commentators don’t get RIM’s strategy
• Microsoft Goes Missing in Mobile Market
• The Global Rise of the Smartphone
• Nokia flagship smartphone knows what it has to do
• The Perfect Mobile Device Doesn’t Exist
• Apple Is Losing Control — and That’s a Good Thing
• Is it game over for Google’s direct-to-consumer Nexus One plans?
• Nokia CEO pledges to ‘help close the gap’ on smartphones
• iPhone and Android Fueling Worldwide Smartphone Growth

Standard disclaimer: don’t take from my selections, ordering, headlines, etc. any indications of the interests or plans of my employer (if you do, you’ll undoubtedly be disappointed when they don’t play out.)

• With More Cores, the Cell Phone Closes in on the Computer
• Four key trends for designing better mobile devices
• The impact of Connected Devices
• Reading your Palm. Who should buy the smartphone manufacturer?
• 4G phones: The promise and the peril
• Quick notes on phone market: Android/Google and SonyEricsson quarterly data
• Lenovo Refocuses on Smartphones to Bolster Sales
• Lessons From the Fall of Palm
• Why Nobody Wants Palm — Except Maybe Facebook
• HP: opportunities for webOS ’smartphones, slates, and potentially netbooks’
• Microsoft Responds About HTC Deal– Concerned About Android
• For Nokia, RIM and others, the innovation window is closing fast