I just finished a book. It was called Taistelu internetistä - Microsoftin, Applen ja Googlen digisodat. The book was a translation of Digital Wars: Apple, Google, Microsoft and the Battle for the Internet by Charles Arthur. For anyone interested about IT and recent historical backgrounds of certain Internet and smartphone (etc.) business of 2000's I would say that it is highly likely interesting and quite entertaining. Hard to estimate how creditable sources were used, but there were no clear indications of major inconsistencies or very probable major untruths being told by reading the book itself.
For me it was one more hole to be filled. I've had my first smartphone only in 2016 (got my 2nd now - both Samsung Galaxy J5 2015 models), as I deemed that could become handy while travelling abroad. I have sort of inherent disinterest to things that are fashionable and popular, which is partially philosophic-ideological attitude too: after 10 years it's easier to see what is actually worth something and not merely a shooting star, so then one can just pick the classics more easily and not waste time with futile toys.
On the other hand I dislike disposal culture that came with mass production. I prefer things to be of good quality and to endure for a long while, and I find it sad how technology business urges us to buy every 1-2 years new gadgets intended unrepairable and disposable despite being filled with valuable rare ores and other raw materials that are not exactly ecological to dig out from the soil. So yes, it is technically waste of time to repair many things as the time spent for repairing can easily equal several times price of a new item, but I'll still prefer to repair damaged devices if I can. In addition I'll learn if I'll try, even if I'll fail.
So anyway, I did not for instance really know much about Apple products particularly, as I had not been very interested about it. Or about the rise of modern multitouch smartphones. In the book Jobs is told to present the first iPhone in such fashion that you'll use instinctly your fingers and no need for stylus - yuk. Well, certain old mobile phones had simply dreadful interface, but I'd surely prefer proper keys over annoying touchscreen as the only control feature. Yes, I can connect a keyboard and mouse into my smartphone, but it would be hard to carry them along, and then a laptop would be better. Also I've found that a stylus would be faster to use due higher accuracy, but all the mobile device styluses I've nowadays seen in markets are fast broken, so blah with them. Touchscreen is nice add-in, but I'd still prefer it not to be the only intended user interface. Obviously I'm in minority with this, I guess despite touchscreens being so extra fragile in most cases.
I also had not I suppose thought about how past market leaders in their own fields Microsoft and Nokia were employing apparently quite much of waterfall design in 2000's, which largely led to their demise. So that requests just fell from the top without necessarily too sharp perception on the real situation, and by the time
Slightly peculiar argument in the book was stated on the pages 251-252, where Japan was referred as the wasteland of smartphones because in 2011 according to the book their market share was only 10% in 2011, while in the world overall it was claimed to be 25% smartphones of all sold phones. My living partner who lived in Japan at that time on the other hand argued that like 80% of people would've had a smartphone in Japan at the time - and that only iPhones counted into that. An obvious hyperbola of course, but nevertheless. According to her also huge amount of people also ordered iPhones over from USA as the devices were not for sale yet in the beginning, when iPhones were originally released. Sounds like alcohol brought to Finland from Estonia - also not properly readable in statistics.
In any case, I'm reserved with claims of both sides. Here it is argued that Android had around 60% share in 2011-2012 and Apple around 30% share in smartphone subscribers, and that in the beginning of 2012 over 19 million people had smartphones there (this suggests that there were 127,6 M people in Japan in 2012). This figure is more or less supported in an article about Japanese smartphone sales in 2011, where it is also referred that the iPhone was the best selling phone model for almost 7.3M out of total 24.2M smartphones sales for 2011.
So first of all, alleged 10% sales "only" for smartphones out of all mobile devices would not make the place quite void of smartphones in my opinion, especially as we're talking about millions. Secondly if they sold over 24M smartphones in 2011 in a country where that consists of almost one fifth of the whole population, it certainly doesn't seem like a desert to me. In Western Europe it's claimed to have been 32% of smartphone penetration in 2011, but only 9% in Central/Eastern Europe (document page 22); although elsewhere it is suggested that Western Europe had 22,7%. Lies, damned lies, and statistics?
It is also noted in the book that Japanese standard phones (feature phones) pretty much had the features of smartphones without app stores, so smartphones were not really even needed as much, and my partner actually disputed that non-iPhones were really not smartphones anyway to Japanese people. At this point I'll just return to the lands of non-existent sun before I'll start to digress into NEC PC-9800 series out of the blue.
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