First, a confession. This guide is always “last minute,” mostly because I get so busy covering all the new devices launched just in time for the holiday shopping season that I end up starting the holiday gift guide late. Last year it was so late that I gave up and turned it into a Best Products of the Year piece instead. This year I’ve missed Chanukah but I’m still getting in ahead of Christmas, so that’s good. However, I do usually try to make this a “non-obvious” gift guide. SlashGear already has you covered if what you want advice on the best cellphone, camera, Bluetooth headset, or the like. My favorite products this year include several on that list, including Apple’s iPad, Jawbone’s ICON, Mophie’s Juice Pack Air and the 11″ MacBook Air. I’d add Amazon’s Kindle and Microsoft’s Kinect (assuming you can find one at retail). But what if you’re looking for…

Stocking Stuffers

For recipients who are accident prone or have mild OCD, the first cleaning solution I have ever recommended is CyberClean. It’s green goop that you press into your gadgets – it is particularly well suited for computer keyboards – and it pulls out all the crumbs, dust bunnies, and [you really don’t want to know]. It doesn’t work miracles, but it does work. It comes in packets or tiny little buckets ($5 – $10 at Best Buy, Amazon, and other retailers).

I thought that I would have a whole section on wire management as several vendors sent me products in this category, but they all lost to Velcro Reusable Self-Gripping Cable Ties ($8.85 on Amazon) which I bought on my own after stumbling upon them while searching for something else. They come in a package of 100, they stay where you put them, they can be reused, they can be used on nearly any size cable, and they cost less than $.09 each. Buy some now.

The Woogie. This isn’t a large, hairy creature played by Peter Mayhew in four Star Wars movies, rather, it may be the most innovative case for touchscreen devices I have ever seen. The Woogie resembles a bright plush octopus and solves the problem that toddlers have with handheld touchscreen devices like the iPod touch: how do you watch those Thomas the Tank Engine videos without touching the screen and causing the movie to pause? Slip the iPhone/iPod touch into the clear pouch on top, and the Woogie rests on your child’s lap. Should it fall, it will be protected. There is an internal speaker that isn’t nearly loud enough (especially in a car), so child-friendly headphones are a must, but that is the only negative I can think of. I cannot overstate how much my 3 year old LOVES this. $20

If you want to give your child an iPad during car trips, Griffin has a solution for that, too. The Cinema Seat ($40) attaches to the back of a car headrest. It attaches with an attached Velcro strap, so it can be removed and used as a regular iPad case if your seven year old chooses not to watch Cars for the millionth time and wants to play Plants vs. Zombies while holding the iPad on his lap instead.

Home Entertainment

Roku pioneered the Netflix streaming digital video player, but there was an explosion of Internet TV boxes this year, and all of them offer Netflix streaming as a highlight feature. Some mighty big names joined the fray, including Apple and Google, and Apple’s $100 Apple TV has the prettiest menus and the best movie/TV rental options. Still, if you mainly want to stream Netflix, the simplest solution – and best value – is still Roku. Even the least expensive box, the Roku HD ($60), can stream movies in high definition (720p; stepping up to the $80 XD or $100 XD|S gets you 1080p support and faster wireless networking) and both setup and operation is exceptionally easy.

A Harmony remote seems to end up on my list every year, and for good reason: the most sophisticated home theater system is useless if you (or your spouse/parent/babysitter) can’t figure out how to use it. Logitech has a massive online database of entertainment products, and the Harmony remotes guide you through programming it through a relatively straightforward online survey. This part of the process is much easier than looking up codes and setting up macros, but it is still not quite idiot-proof. Thankfully, using the remote itself is wonderful: it presents the user with a list of activities (“Watch TV,” “Play Xbox,” etc.) and the buttons are all ergonomically designed. There are bunch of different remotes in Logitech’s Harmony line, and none are new this year. Still, the Logitech Harmony One ($179) is my favorite.

Sonos has long been known for its incredible wireless multi-room audio system. It is dead simple to install, and even complete technophobes can use it. Sonos was one of the first home entertainment companies to provide a free remote control app for the iPod touch or iPhone even though one of Sonos’ products was a touchscreen remote; this year the company added an iPad app. Last year’s big product news was the S5 speaker, an all-in-one unit that adds a zone of music anywhere you plug it in. When Sonos first showed me the S5 speaker, they were adamant that consumers would not want an iPhone/iPod dock to go along with it – after all, Sonos is pulling music from the same PC that an iPod is synchronized with. I argued that consumers would want one anyway. I was right, and Sonos added a Wireless Dock for iPod/iPhone ($119) to the mix this year. Now, a Sonos system is not a stocking stuffer: a full system costs a bit more than $400 per room (the S5 costs $400, and some installations will need a little ZoneBridge box, and some people will want that iPod dock). There are other ways of moving music around your house, but Sonos is still the simplest and most versatile solution, particularly if you want to have music playing in multiple rooms at the same time.

While your giftees are comfortably watching streaming video or listening to music throughout the house they may get hungry. If you really want to complete the picture, send them some Dale and Thomas gourmet popcorn (http://www.daleandthomaspopcorn.com). There are some unique popcorn flavors to choose from, but the kettle corn is addictive and anything with chocolate on it is generally a winner. It also makes an excellent (if late, at this point) Chunukah gift, as all Dale and Thomas popcorn is certified kosher. Sadly, this is another item where I did not receive review units from the manufacturer, and had to test on my own.

They Didn’t Know They Needed This

In-ear headphones are a great upgrade over the cheap earbuds that shipped with your MP3 player or smartphone, and there are many good options from specialty headphone companies like Shure, etymotic, and Ultimate Ears. Even Monster (the overpriced A/V cable company) makes some terrific in-ear headphones. However, if for the ultimate in noise blocking and comfort, you really need custom fit ear molds. Wait, your gift recipient isn’t a rock star? No matter – etymotic’s CUSTOM•FIT program has made customized headphones affordable. For $100, etymotic will connect you with a local audiologist who will make ear impressions (it takes about 10 minutes, it’s completely painless and is actually rather relaxing) who will ship the custom inserts 4 – 8 weeks later (YMMV; mine arrived in two weeks). All of etymotic’s headphones can be fitted this way, including models with built in microphones for use with smartphones. My favorites from the line are the budget ER-6i (currently $71 on Amazon) and higher end ER-4P ($299).

For the gadget lover who does the grocery shopping, I can finally recommend the SmartShopper SS-301 ($129). I have tested a lot of kitchen gadgets, and this is one of the few that has stood the test of time. SmartShopper is a little grey box that sits on your refrigerator (it has a built in magnet) that collects, organizes, and prints your shopping list. You walk up to it, tell it what needs to be added to the list, and it uses voice recognition to add the item. When you are ready to go shopping, its built in thermal printer prints your list, which is now itemized by the section where you will find the item in the store. In this third generation of the product, the voice recognition has been upgraded with Nuance technology and a second list has been added (crucial for those who shop at a supermarket and also a warehouse club or specialty store). The voice recognition still isn’t perfect, and the SmartShopper eats batteries alive (it drains one battery much more quickly than the others), and nobody actually needs one. Of course, nobody needs an iPad, either. That’s why it’s a gift.

For the Apple aficionado who has an iPad and an iPhone or iPod touch, Griffin offers the PowerDock Dual ($60), which charges both items and provides a spot to leave your keys. I can’t really explain why I like this one more than the dozen or so other iPad and iPhone stands and chargers I’ve tested, but I do. (I’m still searching for the perfect iPad case, by the way. I thought I found it, but the sample I received failed the durability test. Next!)

Do you have an old school geek on your list or a writer who uses a Mac? Nothing beats the feel of the original IBM PC keyboards, which uniquely featured buckling spring technology that mimics the feel of IBM’s Selectric typewriters. Some people type faster on these keyboards, others just like the feel. Or the sound – it’s gloriously noisy. IBM stopped making these eons ago, but there’s still a company in Kentucky, Unicomp, who will sell you modern versions of these classics, updated with a USB connection (the Unicomp Customizer 104, available online, $69). For Macs, add $10 to get proper Option and Command keys, and the text entry will be transformed: clicky keys, a full numeric keypad, and an honest to goodness “delete” key.

With so many people using their computers to watch videos and listen to music, upgraded speakers are a great gift that’s still a bit unexpected. For the best bang for the buck, Logitech’s Z623 ($125) 2.1 speakers are hard to beat. They are not the last word in audio quality, but they offer plenty of bass and reasonably well controlled midrange and highs, and they’re THX certified, which means your recipient will think you spent more than you did.

Those pickier about their sound should turn to AudioEngine. The company’s speakers are essentially tiny studio monitors for your computer (the company treats them like pricey studio monitors, too – each speaker is packed in its own soft slip case). At this point, I’ve tested most of the company’s line, but my favorite remains AudioEngine A2’s ($199). The A2 is a tiny little pair of powered speakers which produce clean, exceptionally detailed and uncolored sound regardless of volume. Despite their size, upper bass is plentiful. Deep bass requires a subwoofer, but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed them without one (AudioEngine sells a subwoofer for $349; that’s the one speaker I have not tested yet). AudioEngine has larger desktop speakers, too, but I didn’t find that the added size improved the bass enough to justify giving up the desk space, and I really, really like the sound of the A2’s.

However, if you really want to give an over-the-top gift, you can combine a pair of AudioEngine P4 unpowered speakers with the N22 desktop amplifier. The P4’s are a bit larger than the A2’s but will look just right next to today’s larger displays. Does separating the amplification from the speaker cabinet appreciably improve the sound? Not to my ears, but this arrangement allows your giftee the option of upgrading the amplifier or speakers in the future – not that they’ll need to.

An all-in-one printer can scan full page documents well, but what do you do if you want to scan in receipts or business cards or some other oddly shaped paper of variable thickness? Fujitsu’s ScanSnap S300 should have been the answer, as it was compact and extremely flexible: load it up with ten documents of any size, press a button, and you have an editable PDF (or email, or JPG, etc., single-sided or duplex). However, the S300 device drivers were notoriously fickle so I never could recommend it, and when I upgraded my XP notebook it didn’t take well to Vista or Windows 7 and I couldn’t get it running on 64-bit Windows 7 at all. Earlier this year, Fujitsu replaced the S300 with the ScanSnap S1300 ($259) and upgraded the software so that it works with PCs and Macs alike. The included software for managing scanned files and handling business cards differs based on platform, but everything I’ve tried has worked on both a Windows 7 64 bit Thinkpad and an iMac running Snow Leopard. Fujitsu also threw in the ability to create searchable keywords by highlighting the word on the document with a highlighter pen before scanning, which I thought would make an awesome party trick, though my wife informs me otherwise. A scanner is not the most exciting gift you can give someone, but there’s a good chance that this gift will still be in use this time next year.

Avi Greengart is a consumer devices analyst for Current Analysis covering phones, personal connected devices, and connected devices in the digital home. Unless otherwise noted, Avi did not pay for any of the products listed above. No company paid for inclusion on this list, and Current Analysis clients did not get preferential treatment.

Or: Will Google’s Open Model Overcome Apple’s Closed Model?

There is an argument I’m hearing a lot lately that Apple is repeating the mistakes it made in the PC era again today with the iPhone. The argument – which I’ve heard from financial analysts, journalists, and my friend Marc on our walk home from synagogue – goes something like this:

In 1984 Apple ran an ad during the Super Bowl promising that 1984 would not be like [the totalitarian world of George Orwell’s novel] “1984.” Apple then launched the Macintosh, which had an enormous lead over the rest of the PC industry thanks to its graphical user interface. But Steve Jobs decided to keep the Mac a completely closed system while Bill Gates over at Microsoft invited all comers to build apps for MS-DOS. Thanks to the open nature of the PC platform, clone makers from Compaq to Gateway to Dell built more powerful hardware than Apple, Microsoft eventually built its own graphical user interface, and the Mac was relegated to 2% market share.

In 2007, Apple launched the iPhone, which had an enormous lead over the rest of the mobile phone industry thanks to its graphical user interface. But then Steve Jobs decided to keep the iPhone a completely closed system while Andy Rubin over at Google invited all comers to build apps for Android. Thanks to the open nature of the Android platform, vendors from HTC to Motorola to Samsung are building more powerful hardware than Apple, and soon the iPhone will be relegated to a small percentage of the market, and Apple will be in trouble once again.

That’s the argument. It’s wrong on a bunch of levels. Oh, there are parallels, but it’s still wrong.

First, let’s tackle the revisionist history: back in 1984 Apple didn’t have as big a lead as it looked. The Mac was beautiful, but there wasn’t much you could do with it (the advent of desktop publishing single handedly rescued the platform from oblivion). In contrast, the iPhone is a market leader in large part because it is the most versatile platform – there are more, and higher quality apps for iOS than all other platforms combined. App developers nearly always target Apple first because that’s where the money is.

Some argue that this app advantage will be short lived, and app developers will switch allegiance as Android shipments exceed iPhones, which is already happening according to most market sizing numbers. Jobs argues that will not happen because fragmentation within the Android camp makes iOS app development more appealing, but I expect Google to minimize the version fragmentation going forward by slowing down the pace of software releases now that Android is maturing, leaving mainly screen resolution fragmentation as an issue for developers to deal with.

However, while I don’t expect fragmentation to slow Android’s rise, I don’t think Apple has anything to worry about here: it already has the most apps, the best apps, and the deepest selection of good niche apps. It is a leader in mobile gaming. As long as Apple maintains a meaningful share of the market overall, it will remain a premier mobile platform for developers. Apple is also benefiting from the reach iOS has in media devices (the iPod touch) and tablets (with the iPad), not to mention the leading digital media store, iTunes. Android is beginning to compete with Apple in tablets, but the iPad has a significant lead – Google has not even built a tablet-specific version of Android yet, and the iPad enjoys a massive lead in tablet-specific apps.

But doesn’t open always beat closed?

Not necessarily. Google argues that consumers want an open OS. Why? The benefits to consumers for Apple’s controlled environment are clear (the iPhone delivers a consistently good user experience), while Android’s openness has been a mixed bag: there is diverse hardware available, but fragmentation has left some phones unable to run the latest apps, and even as that situation improves, carriers have imposed their own restrictions on core elements of the platform. Cellphones are the most personal of personal technology, and there is no reason to think that we will end up with a single platform. Our present state of seven major platforms (iOS, Android, WP7, webOS, Symbian, MeeGo, BlackBerry) is not sustainable, either, but it is definitely not a zero sum game where if Android succeeds, the iPhone fails.

Apple is dominant in a critical industry metric: profitability – Apple makes more money than anyone else in the industry. It sells high margin devices (the average selling price paid by carriers for the iPhone last quarter was $610) and sells tens of millions of them per quarter (14.1 million of them last quarter). Apple doesn’t break out profitability by business unit, but iPhone revenues were $8.6 billion last quarter and corporate gross margin was over 36%, so iPhone profits are extremely robust no matter how the numbers actually break down. When Google sells an Android phone, it makes nothing, because Google doesn’t sell Android phones; Google licenses the OS for free.

Google claims that Android is profitable thanks to advertising revenues Google accrues down the line, but from that perspective, Google actually gets a fair amount of mobile advertising revenue from the iPhone as well. Google’s business model is different from Apple, allowing both Android and iOS to be successful at the same time. Right now, Apple outsells any individual Android licensee and outearns all of them combined. Even if Android takes an even larger share of the market overall, as long as Apple remains one of the top three or four smartphone vendors and continues selling high margin devices, Apple wins the real game among handset vendors, which is making money.

How likely is Apple to remain one of the top smartphone vendors over the next few years (i.e., large enough to continue to present a healthy target for app developers)? Bet on it. Apple has the lead in apps, consistently refreshes its hardware thanks to strong profits, leads in digital media sales, and owns an incredibly strong brand. Given its position and assets, there are only two things that could realistically knock Apple out: if Apple completely misses an inflection point in how smartphones are used, or if Google chose to use mobile advertising revenue to subsidize hardware (not just the OS), penalizing companies that charge for premium hardware. Either scenario is certainly possible, but rather unlikely, in the near term.

The pace of innovation at Google is astonishing, and Android has easier access to market segments Apple has chosen to avoid – entry level smartphones, QWERTY businessphones, orange square-shaped swivel phones aimed at tweens. However, Apple chose to avoid those segments for a reason: it can make more money by offering a consistent experience on a limited number of hardware variants. Apple is just fine with Google “beating” it in marketshare as long as it can corral the lion’s share of industry profits.

The war of words between Apple and Adobe started out with public statements, moved to full page advertisements, and has descended into confusion as Apple has backtracked on one of its initial restrictions and RIM and Samsung have highlighted Flash support on their tablets. To unravel this mess, let’s go back to the beginning: In April, Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to Adobe as a press release and posted it on the Apple.com home page (it can still be found online). Jobs lists six extremely well-argued points, but only two of them matter: Flash’s ubiquity on the web, and cross-platform development. (Some of the other points are legitimate – Flash can be buggy, when it runs without hardware acceleration it eats battery life alive, and some Flash content has not been formatted for touch. However, Apple claiming that it cannot support Flash because it isn’t “open” is disingenuous; Apple supports whatever standards it wants to, and while Flash is most certainly a proprietary standard, it is a standard.)

Flash on the Internet

Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. Apple argues that much of this video is also available in other formats or as iOS apps. There is some truth to both positions. Most video is accessible on Apple products in one form or another, but the user is sometimes forced to jump through hoops to view it – either by switching out of the browser to an app or waiting a few hours or days for the video that just went viral to get transcoded into H.264. In practice, Apple can probably wait this one out.

The other area where Flash dominates the web is in animation – for web site design elements and games. Apple certainly is no slouch in the gaming department, and in practice I have found that few Flash animation sites are optimized for a smartphone’s smaller screen size. Apple suggests that once developers are reformatting their content for phones, they might as well use HTML5. Adobe counters that many desktop browsers do not support HTML5 at all, and that Flash has a richer set of tools for development and deployment (such as analytics and advertising plug-ins). The bottom line: Flash content rarely works well on phones, and there is no clear answer for content developers who need to straddle multiple formats for full coverage of desktops, phones, and Apple devices.

However, once the focus shifts to tablets, things get much simpler: when surfing the Internet on larger screen devices it is quite jarring to find blank websites where Flash ought to be, and where Flash sites could be properly rendered. Therefore, the lack of Flash on the iPad becomes a real liability, and while it apparently has not been enough to slow sales of the iPad one iota, it is an area where Samsung, RIM, and Apple’s other tablet competitors have a legitimate differentiator.

Cross-Platform Development

Flash allows cross-platform development. PC, phone, tablet (including RIM’s PlayBook), and even some connected television platforms. Apple wants developers to specifically target its own platforms. There is some consumer justification for this beyond the obvious desire to increase the number of apps that are available for Apple devices and Apple devices alone. Applications developed for cross-platform use typically do not take advantage of platform-specific hardware features (like the gyroscope in the iPhone 4) and are built around user interface standards that can be radically different from the native platform. It is fair to make the case that the consumer experience on a cross-platform app might be compromised relative to a native app.

Still, Apple recently backtracked on its prohibition against using non-Apple development tools, opening the door to apps written using Adobe tools and then compiled for the iPhone (Apple is still not supporting Flash in the browser and will not provide a Flash runtime environment on the iPhone). Apple’s official explanation for the reversal was that it had, “listened to our developers and taken much of their feedback to heart.” Apple did not take “all” of the feedback to heart, just “much” of it, so it is safe to assume that getting the EU to drop its investigation into Apple uncompetitive practices may have also been part of its motivation.

Apple is dealing from a position of strength in apps and may have been reluctant to allow cross-platform apps, but its competitors are willing to get apps any which way they can. When RIM launched its QNX Neutrino–based Tablet OS this week, it noted that there will be an SDK for native applications, but then immediately gave developers other options: a web apps framework, BlackBerry OS 6 (Java) apps, Adobe Flash and Adobe AIR.

Next Steps

Adobe must end its self-destructive attempt to convince Apple that it’s wrong. That is a battle Adobe cannot win, and in the process of aiming its message at Apple, Adobe is losing consumers and developers. If the ability of Adobe to convince Steve Jobs to change his mind is a stretch, convincing consumers to stay away from Apple products is downright laughable. Adobe needs to promote an extremely simple message, and it must be aimed at Adobe’s actual customers: developers. The message needs to be that Adobe builds the best tools for creating multimedia content. That’s it. Adobe’s mantra should be if you are building anything with visual content for distribution on nearly any platform, you should be using Adobe tools. If you’re building Flash, you need CS5. If you’re building HTML 5, you need CS5. If you’re building content for distribution via both Flash and HTML 5 or something else entirely, you need CS5. If you are building content libraries for the web, phones, tablets, PCs, televisions… did we mention you need CS5?

Of course, Adobe has to ensure that this message is believable, because if it isn’t, its entire business model is in trouble. Adobe also has to stop denigrating HTML5 (one session at Adobe’s upcoming developer conference is titled, “HTML5: Half-baked, Baked, or Ready for the Table?”); instead of identifying holes in the feature set, Adobe should be filling in those holes with tools and services. Similarly, Adobe needs to fix the lingering problems with Flash (such as SEO — Google’s index spiders don’t know how to parse Flash content and largely ignore it.). As for Apple, I’d like to see Flash in the browser for the iPad. Oh, I know that’s not going to happen, but I’d like it just the same.

Relevant Entries on SlashGear

• Flash on the iPhone – What Adobe should have said, was nothing
• Flash Coming to iPhone one way or another, says Adobe
• Adobe CEO on Apple Flash argument: “We’ve moved on”
• Software update from Apple aims to fix battery woes
• Adobe: Packager for iPhone apps already being approved

Nokia’s struggles in smartphones are well documented, and I’m not going to rehash them here. However, if you live in the U.S. it is easy to overlook just how huge and successful Nokia is. Even in smartphones, Nokia is the global volume leader, and when it comes to featurephones, Nokia literally sells about six dozen of them in the time it takes to read this sentence – every minute of every day. Most of those are basic voice phones sold in emerging markets like India and Africa, but Nokia is also the market leader in multimedia featurephones. Nokia’s latest entry in that category is the X3 Touch and Type (not to be confused with the X3, launched last year), which is a Series 40 phone with a touchscreen on top and a physical numeric keypad below. I find the X3 Touch and Type deeply disturbing.

First, a bit of background: Whenever I’ve gone to Nokia’s headquarters in Espoo, Finland (which looks like what would happen if you crossed an IKEA with an Apple store), I’ve been impressed by how humble, competitive, and damned smart the people are. Finland has some of the highest labor rates in the world, yet Nokia somehow manages to effectively compete with Chinese vendors on cost. Nokia is not just the largest handset vendor in the world, in most of the world the company retains a premium brand image – and in some areas Nokia has staggeringly high market share.

Nokia got this way by riding the GSM wave in Europe with durable, stylish phones that had wonderfully simple user interfaces. Nokia then built a supply chain and manufacturing capabilities second to none, and it pushed hard into emerging markets such as India, China, and Africa, where it maintains distribution advantages that rivals still have a tough time matching. Ever-conscious of creating economies of scale, Nokia split its line into three basic platforms: S30 for basic voice, S40 for mid-tier feature phones, and S60 for smartphones. However, with the strategy set, Nokia seemingly put its designers on auto-pilot.

Over the past ten years, Nokia has stood by while an entire generation of new form factors has passed it by; Nokia missed the clamshell, the thin trend, QWERTY messaging phones, and touchscreens. In each instance, Nokia half-heartedly introduced its own take on these designs a few years late, just in time to miss what’s next. The touchscreen feature phone has been around so long that, after dozens of iterations, LG actually has a uniform touchscreen UI, and Samsung decided to turn its RTOS (Real Time OS) into a smartphone platform. In contrast, the interface on the new X3 is just touch-enabled S40 without the benefit of a virtual or physical QWERTY keyboard. Nokia calls this “Touch & Type,” but that is misleading, as no typing is involved.

Nokia’s research indicates that consumers want to use their phones with just a single hand. That undoubtedly is what Nokia’s research subjects say when they are asked, but it does not necessarily translate to sales purchase behavior; touchscreen and QWERTY phones are strong sellers in nearly every market where they are introduced. Besides, I’ve been an analyst long enough to have seen this play out before; single-handed use was also Nokia’s rationale for disregarding clamshells back in 2002. Nokia has not learned from its mistakes, so it is doomed to repeat them.

The X3’s physical keyboard is another case of Nokia moving around buttons and using oddly shaped keys and then claiming that consumers will not notice. (The worst example of this was the 3650, which had a circular key layout. At the time, Nokia’s product manager explained that user testing did not indicate that this was a problem. Riiiiight.) Nokia did make the right decision to use hard SEND and END keys on the X3 Touch and Type, and including dedicated messaging and music buttons is also welcome. The X3 Touch and Type’s saving grace is its style and cost structure; most touchscreen phones are priced above its EUR 125 price point, and it is commendably thin with a metal (as opposed to plastic) back plate. The X3 Touch and Type further differentiates itself with a 5MP camera. In price-sensitive markets where Nokia’s brand alone is worth a premium and Nokia has significant distribution advantages, the phone should sell well despite its flaws.

However, it is disconcerting to see that Nokia’s troubles are not relegated only to smartphones, where the company acknowledges that it fell behind. After I had submitted this column, Nokia announced the 5250 – a full touchscreen Symbian ^1 smartphone due out later this year for just EUR 115 – less than the X3 Touch and Type. The user experience on resistive Symbian touchscreens is lousy, but the price is right, and it will put serious pressure on Samsung’s Bada, which thus far has only been used with premium hardware.

Nokia’s annual launch/developer event, Nokia World, is coming up next month, and I expect we’ll see Nokia announcing its first MeeGo device there, aimed at high end smartphones from Apple and Android licensees. It is not clear whether Nokia’s high/low approach in smartphones will be enough, but Nokia is behind the competition in mid-tier feature phones, too, and the X3 Touch and Type is not enough to catch up.

Relevant Entries on SlashGear

• Nokia’s latest 6210, 6220, N78, and N96 Hands-On
• Verizon Kin due May 13th; presales this Thursday
• Nokia’s stance on portable music is transparently obvious
• Nokia: 5800 3G issue only in NY and Chicago
• LG BL40 21:9 touchscreen phone shows up in wild

As an analyst, I’m frequently asked for advice on buying different phones. I’m happy to give it, but when I “review” phones I am typically looking at it from more of a strategic angle. In other words, I’m trying to determine “how does this help/hurt the vendor/carrier,” not “is this a good phone, per se.” You’d be surprised at how many terrible phones sell well, and how many fine phones falter. It’s my job to help vendors and carriers navigate these dynamics. With that in mind, here’s my mid-year update on Android and the challenges vendors face when licensing it.

Handset vendors choosing an operating system have the same choice as you do when you’re deciding whether to cook dinner or order take-out: build vs. buy. Building an OS from scratch not only requires technical expertise to compete with the best offerings on the market, but also the ability to galvanize developers to support the platform. Understandably, most manufacturers choose to source their OS from someone else. Android is the licensed OS of the moment, largely because the other options didn’t innovate fast enough – Microsoft had to abandon Windows Mobile and start fresh with Windows Phone 7 and Symbian ought to be doing the same thing.

Android has a lot to recommend it in any case. It’s backed by Google, which has a strong consumer brand. Android still provides the best integration with Google’s services and its non-obtrusive notification system is the envy of annoyed iOS users everywhere. Google has also done a terrific job of creating an easy to use and widely adopted development environment. Android Market is growing quickly along with the installed base as there are now Android devices in a variety of form factors from many vendors at multiple carriers. It’s free, sort of (vendors typically still need to pay for ancillary IP before they can ship a phone), and it’s open source, sort of (Google tightly manages changes to the OS and only releases the source code at intervals it chooses).

There are plenty of weaknesses, too. The user interface is relatively complicated and appeals to those with a higher technical comfort level than iOS; the iPhone’s deliberately simple operation still has the broadest appeal, ranging from simplicity-seekers to power users. Android offers limited social network integration out of the box, lacks any sort of PC client for storage and synchronization, and Google provides no consumer-friendly options for getting movies or TV shows onto the device.

The downside to choosing to “buy” Android rather than “building” your own OS is that you must then compete with all the other Android phones on the market. The question then becomes how to differentiate your Android phone from everyone else’s. I have identified six different factors that vendors are using: price, hardware specifications, software customization, industrial design, availability, and carrier backing. I have a lot of analysis on each of these points, but here’s a SlashGear summary:

Price – It is an axiom of business school textbooks that while you cannot always compete on price profitably, you can nearly always try. That is not necessarily the case for smartphones in heavily subsidized postpaid markets like the U.S. and the UK. Carrier subsidies and standard pricing levels (such as $99 and $199) obscure the actual price of the device, taking it out of the end consumer’s buying decision.

Hardware specifications – Differentiating based on unique hardware specifications can certainly be done, but the windows of time when a product is truly unique is shrinking because vendors generally all have access to the same components. That should not detract from the obvious: Android is much more competitive when using high-end hardware, and with the improved specs, Android has closed the hardware gap with Apple. Apple upped the screen resolution on the iPhone 4 to an incredible 640 x 960, but its screen size is stuck at 3.5”. In practice, the iPhone 4 is better for reading text, and the larger Android phones are better for watching movies – assuming you can figure out how to get a movie on there in the first place.

Software customization – Early on, it was fairly easy to create a uniquely compelling software layer on top of Android because the stock interface was rather rudimentary. The most recent editions finally feel like a complete OS without requiring vendor embellishments; 2.2 fixes a key usability issue by placing the phone call icon on the static ribbon bar, enabling users to quickly dial the phone without first having to search for it. However, there are still some areas where Android needs help: social network integration, media, and gaming.

Industrial design – Most touchscreen phones today all share the same basic look (a thin slab dominated by a huge screen); the details differ, but all are reasonably attractive. As such, good industrial design is a requirement, but not enough to drive purchase decisions on its own. As the smartphone category matures there is room to segment the market with non-standard form factors, but these are not likely to be the volume sellers.

Availability – Lately, it seems that any phone you want to buy is already sold out. The reasons for the inventory problems differ by product, but vendors who can control their supply chain have a decided competitive advantage.

Carrier backing – In the US, carriers rule, and getting a piece of carrier shelf space is a prerequisite for volume sales. Every attempt to circumvent or break carrier control over handset distribution has failed, including efforts by Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Google. Even Apple, which may be the only vendor with the brand and physical retail store network to actually pull it off, chose to work with carriers from the outset, and capitulated to the dominant subsidy model after just a single year. US carriers are also among the largest advertisers in the world – up there with beer brands and Coke. As such, carrier lineups and priorities matter as much as all the other factors combined. That does not mean carriers are monolithic. Some carriers need Android more than others, some are creating their own sub-brands, and each carrier wants to customize or lock down Android to various degrees.

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I was at E3 last week (was that just last week?) and attended two separate Nintendo events: the press conference where Nintendo talked about upcoming products, and an Analyst Q&A session where Nintendo executives explained Nintendo’s strategy to a group of mostly financial analysts who looked grossly out of place at E3 (financial analyst types dress much, much better than the average E3 attendee). One of the things that struck me in the press conference is how much Nintendo is competing against Apple in mobile gaming, and one of the things I discovered in the Q&A session is how much alike the two companies are in their approach to product development.

The Wii portion of the press conference was confined to new exclusive titles; Nintendo has a tremendous amount of positive sales wind at its back and it doesn’t feel the need to change the hardware at all. Short term I agree with them; over the past six months the Wii outsold Microsoft and Sony combined, and the $199 Wii has a decisive price advantage over the Xbox 360 plus Kinect (likely at least $299 for the Arcade version, and possibly more) and Sony PlayStation 3 plus Move controllers (at least $379). Nintendo doesn’t need to do anything to the Wii this year, but it will need to overhaul the Wii in 2011 or 2012 to remain relevant as a majority of households have HDTVs and Microsoft can further cost reduce the Xbox and Kinect.

While Nintendo is leaving its console alone, it is making significant advances in 3D portable gaming. The 3DS extends Nintendo’s leading portable franchise by adding a glasses-free 3D screen in addition to the 2D touchscreen on today’s version. The 3D effect was excellent, though it does not work off-angle and it can be adjusted or turned off entirely. In my brief look, 3D did appear to significantly enhance gameplay, and the top screen can also be used to watch 3D content from Hollywood. Dual 3D cameras around back can be used to take 3D pictures, and the 3DS has been upgraded with an accelerometer and gyroscope to enable iPhone-style games. The 3DS still lacks cellular data connections, but its WiFi capabilities will include background connectivity to enhance gaming with interactivity and enable content downloads without user intervention.

I was extremely impressed with the 3DS; by providing a unique gaming experience it exemplifies how to compete against multifunction gadgets with a single-purpose device. The problem with the 3DS is simple: timing. Nintendo did not announce pricing or availability, though it did say it expects to ship the 3DS by the end of the fiscal year, or March of 2011. That would miss the critical holiday 2010 sales season, and gives Apple a chance to steal sales forward with the iPod touch, which is already a big hit among younger gamers. Worse, Apple is expected to upgrade the iPod touch line this fall, and a camera, gyroscope, and retina screen could all be part of that offering. Still, while Apple may erode Nintendo’s total available market, there should still be room in the market for a general purpose multimedia device and one dedicated to unique gaming experiences.

During the Analyst Q&A session, I was fascinated by the parallels between Nintendo and Apple. Both have fairly rigid product development approaches, and rarely alter their plans in response to competitors. They both focus less on a piece of hardware than on creating a compelling and cohesive user experience thanks to a combination of software and hardware that are developed at the same time (surprisingly, this approach is actually quite rare in consumer electronics). In the games business, hardware and software are typically developed by separate companies, but Nintendo is fully willing to compete with its third party software developers and its own titles are the most significant part of its business model.

Of course, there are differences, too. Apple’s reach is far more expansive, touching on computing, telephony, music, movies, and web services, while Nintendo has a laser focused on gaming. Apple is building multi-purpose devices and is now extremely dependent on its third party developer community for iOS apps. Nintendo’s devices tend to be more focused (not quite single-purpose, but close) and while Nintendo pointed out that the 3DS has the best third party support it has ever seen for one of its platforms, that’s an anomaly, not the rule. Both companies are extremely profitable, and while the first question of the day (mine) was around 3DS launch timetables, the second question was one that Apple frequently gets from the financial analyst community: what does Nintendo intend to do with all of its cash?

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At last week’s Google I/O conference, the search giant revealed plans for new web video technologies, an update to Android, and Google TV. Before we get into what Google TV is, it’s worth noting something that it isn’t – a tablet. (You’re probably thinking, “I don’t need a fancy analyst guy to tell me that Google TV isn’t a tablet, it’s sort of self-evident.” Bear with me.) Apple’s unbelievable early success with the iPad is due in large part to the fact that the iPad isn’t an entirely new product – it’s a sibling to the iPod touch. However, in addition to extending the iPhone/iPod/iTunes ecosystem to include the iPad, Apple rewrote its apps for the larger form factor and encouraged developers to specifically target the iPad with a segmented app store. Google is now targeting all three screens, the PC, TV, and phone, but missed the opportunity at its annual developer event to promote its vision for things that fit in between the phone and PC. There will be dozens of Android tablets out this year, and none of them will have an optimized experience. I think this is a major missed opportunity.

However, they did launch Google TV, which is based on four technologies: Android 2.1, the Chrome browser, Adobe’s Flash, and an Intel processor. Google TV isn’t a single product, it’s a platform that can be built as a standalone box or integrated into other devices. Logitech has signed up to build a dedicated Google TV device, Sony promises to have embedded Google TV in some of its TVs and Blu-ray players in time for the holidays, and DISH Network will have a settop box with Google TV in it at some point. Best Buy has agreed to sell these things.

Google TV allows consumers to browse the web on their TV, watch YouTube on the TV, and search for content to watch. Searches return results with both traditional broadcast and cable results mixed with Internet video content. It wasn’t clear what Internet content will be included; when I asked Google if Netflix Watch Instantly shows would be included in search results, they told me to ask Netflix. (At that point I didn’t bother asking about Hulu, which actively blocks its content from Google TV alternatives such as Boxee’s upcoming Box being built by D-Link.)

Since it’s based on Android and supports Flash, Google hopes that developers write apps for Google TV, and the company is extending the Android Market to Google TV to make it easy to find apps. This is far from the first app store concept we’ve seen – even for televisions – but the potential for unique apps is one of the more compelling aspects to the announcement. On the flip side, Google TV doesn’t necessarily have a tuner (unless it’s built into a TV or satellite set top box) and there’s no storage as part of the spec, so there is some setup required to get Google TV to talk to your TV, cable box, or DVR if you actually want to watch or record the traditional TV content you found in your search.

I like Google TV as a platform, but find the initial execution lackluster. The problem is simple: consumers are not willing to attach another device to their TV unless it offers a clear value proposition. For example, game consoles play games and optical disc players play movies and the Roku is an inexpensive way to stream content from Netflix. The Google TV value proposition – search-based directory and viewing Internet content on the TV – does not justify the expense of an integrated solution or the cost and complexity of an external box. (At least Google isn’t also asking for subscription fees – its investment will be repaid with advertising).

But Roku was only successful once the cost of the box dropped below $100, and Google’s Intel-based solution is bound to be more expensive than that. Google needs to get the price down and then either convince cable operators to embed Google TV into the cable boxes they already rent to consumers, or get a much bigger coalition of TV manufacturers to embed it into their sets. Today’s piecemeal approach doesn’t offer consumers enough value and won’t get Google a large enough footprint in the home.

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As I was in the middle of writing this month’s column on Microsoft’s Kin, SlashGear editor Chris Davies sent me a draft of Michael Gartenberg’s column on… Microsoft’s Kin. I was relieved to see that there wasn’t too much overlap; Michael’s column is on the Kin’s target market, and I’m focusing on changing carrier pricing structures. I agree with Michael’s premise: there is pent up demand for a social network appliance, and the TwitterPeek ain’t it. My problem with the Kin is that we haven’t been given the critical piece of information that will determine whether it will be a success: data pricing.

The U.S. cellular market is constantly evolving, but the majority of phones sold in this country today are still featurephones bought subsidized for $0 – $50 after rebate with a two year contract from a carrier store. In the past, phones like these were sold with voice plans. Carriers introduced in-network calling circles and family plans to reduce churn (i.e., make it less likely for customers to switch to another carrier) and when text messaging proved to be extremely popular, they jacked up rates on individual messages while introducing unlimited text plans, a combination that encouraged heavier messaging use and guaranteed a consistent monthly data component (text messaging counts as “data” as far as Wall Street is concerned, and investors love consistency). However, most consumers found little reason to buy a separate data plan; carriers offered a limited subset of the Internet (“walled gardens”) that provided a pretty lousy user experience, and the consumers who really valued email, web surfing, and apps gravitated to smartphones.

Today, according to the CTIA, U.S. cellphone penetration is above 90%, which indicates that pretty much everyone who wants a phone has one. Some have two (otherwise, you can’t approach 100% as most children still don’t have their own phones. Yet). This also means that carriers are now in a zero sum game – to grow, they can’t just find new customers, they have to steal market share from each other. In a free market, this often leads to price competition, and we started seeing that a few years ago with declining voice rates. Carriers kept their monthly price tiers the same but added more minutes into each plan tier. That worked for a while, but recently the national carriers have had to respond to budget regional carriers such as MetroPCS and Cricket who introduced budget unlimited plans. That forced the nationals to do likewise and offer their own unlimited voice plans, and then – gasp – actually cut the prices on those plans.

Charging less money for more minutes is not a recipe for good earnings reports, so carriers are trying to make up for the loss of voice revenue by increasing data income. One way to do that is to flood the market with QWERTY messaging phones because carriers found that if it is easier for people to text, they do it more. Another method is to super-subsidize smartphones with rich email and web capabilities; even after the subsidies, a $30 per month data plan makes a smartphone customer a profitable customer. But the boldest move is to simply make data a mandatory component of featurephone plans in addition to optional text messaging plans.

That has meant that some national carriers now offer three tiers of phones, each with a different amount of mandatory data. At the bottom level, there are still phones with no specific data plan requirements (and when those devices include a QWERTY keyboard, they are often the best selling devices in the store). In the middle are devices with $10 – 20 data plans, and at the top of the food chain, there are smartphones with $30 data plans. The problem is convincing consumers that there is a reason to step up to the middle tier of devices with a required data plan. One approach is to move all the QWERTY and touchscreen featurephones to that tier; consumers who cannot afford a full smartphone data plan can get something that looks like a smartphone with lower monthly payments than a smartphone requires. Another approach would be to provide a genuine need for a data plan, and this is where Microsoft’s Kin comes in: the social connectivity and continuous cloud backup it features obviously require some sort of data plan.

Microsoft Kin One and Kin Two hands-on:

But how much will the Kin cost? Hardware pricing is not the issue. The Kin One and Kin Two are essentially Zune HD units with a cellular radio, high resolution camera, slider mechanism, extra buttons, and less flash memory. After subsidies, the Kin One should be in the same pricing neighborhood as Samsung and LG’s featurephone line at Verizon Wireless (currently $79 – $99), and the Kin Two might be a bit more.

The data plan will be key. If Verizon Wireless uses the Kin’s unique capabilities as a justification for stepping up to a $10/month data plan plus a mandatory $20/month text messaging plan, it will be a smash hit. The Kin’s target market already considers unlimited text messaging mandatory, and the Kin is far more capable than other mid-data-tier devices like Samsung’s Reality or LG’s enV touch. If the carrier requires a $20/month plan plus $20 for text messaging, the Kin will still have appeal, but only as a niche device, similar to T-Mobile’s Sidekick (which was often a more visible brand than sales champ). However, if Verizon Wireless requires a full $30/month data plan for the Kin, it will be a disaster. The Kin is a limited-function device in an era of smartphones, and for those willing to pay full smartphone data rates, there are already some Incredible choices available.

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I was at CTIA last week pitching various column ideas to SlashGear Editor Vincent Nguyen, and he shot them down, one by one. An analysis of the Kindle vs. iPad? No, SlashGear has covered that more than once, and we’ll all be writing hands-on reports next week. How the digital home environment has changed? New columnist Ben Bajarin just used that theme as his debut for SlashGear. How I lived on loaner laptops, cellphones and 3G modems last week when our town was out of power? Too close to Michael Gartenberg’s recent column on traveling with just a cellphone. Apparently, the big stuff is covered. So instead, I’m going to try to provide a look into how one analyst covers a trade show: a tech travelogue, of sorts.

CTIA Day -1: Arrive in Las Vegas a full day and a half early, as the day before the show is often full of trade shows and meetings. Not this year. I looked into moving to a later flight and spending another day with my family, but the flights were all overbooked. Discover that there are people coming to this town for vacations. Really? Who knew. Car rental place promises eternal damnation if I don’t take the extra insurance. Don’t take the extra insurance anyway.

Park in my usual spot in the Hilton’s North parking garage. Yes, I’m here often enough to have a usual spot. Strikes me that this is really sad. Laugh at the couple walking hand-in-hand trying to figure out what entertainment the Hilton offers (answer: none. They killed the Star Trek Experience and even Barry Manilow pulled up shop to moved to a rival venue). Check into hotel and start writing a report under embargo on Palm’s Pre Plus and Pixi Plus coming to AT&T. Make mistake of turning on TV, get nowhere on the report.

CTIA Day 0: Spend most of the day holed up in the hotel catching up on email and non-CTIA-related reports. Shut down in late afternoon to head to the Bellagio for a Motorola dinner. Walk about a mile inside the hotel (literally) trying to find the right ballroom. Discover later that there was a much shorter route – and I’ve been to the ballrooms in this hotel at least a dozen times before. The dinner was basically an informal way to introduce the Motorola i1 Android phone for Sprint’s iDEN (Nextel) network. The i1 could be mistaken for the CLIQ XT at T-Mobile – I had one on hand for comparison – though it has been ruggedized somewhat. Pouring water on it did no damage, but I was asked to refrain from dunking it in the water cup (take a note: analysts make terrible dinner companions). The i1 should do fairly well; there are still a lot of people on the iDEN network who are looking for something other than the single RIM BlackBerry Sprint offers.

Left the dinner early to head to the Renaissance for ShowStoppers. Discover I missed meeting Dirty Jobs’ Mike Rowe at Motorola. Oh well. Showstoppers is one of two evening events geared towards press and analysts; it’s a large room with vendor tables staffed by senior PR execs and product managers, and can be the best way to see a lot of products and build relationships with the companies. Unfortunately, building relationships was all I did at this particular event, as there wasn’t much new to see.

From there I drove over to the Venetian and followed the giant deceptive billboards to the Tao (it’s just a regular nightclub; I have yet to see the bare-backed woman in the ads) for Verizon Wireless’ low key party. At the Fall CTIA party I had a terrific conversation with Verizon CEO Lowell McAdams without any PR handlers around, but this time I spent most of my time talking to the PR handlers themselves.

Back to the hotel and a few more minutes of writing the Palm report before heading to bed.

CTIA Day 1: With my staff attending the keynotes, I headed straight to carrier meetings and press conferences at the convention center. After meetings at one end of the convention center, walked to the other end of the convention for Samsung’s gala Galaxy S launch. I can’t describe how happy I was to find that the wacky dance troupe from Barcelona was not back for an encore; instead, a troupe put on a multimedia play showing a day in the life of a Galaxy S user that was surprisingly effective. The Galaxy S has an amazing screen, but perhaps more amazing is that the software Samsung is adding to Android 2.1 actually appears to enhance the overall user experience, something I can’t say for TouchWiz on the Behold II. After getting some hands-on time with a unit and coming away impressed, I walked to the other end of the convention for a T-Mobile presentation on its HDPA+ network.

T-Mobile had a small room and no chairs because analysts and journalists like walking and standing all day. T-Mobile claims that its HSPA+ network will be able to download files as fast as rivals’ 4G networks, and it is just a software upgrade for its existing base stations, unlike WiMAX or LTE. They showed off a nice little data stick and a Dell netbook with HSPA+ capabilities. I have two problems with T-Mobile’s message here: 1) it’s great that HSPA+ is just a software upgrade, but just like its competitors, it hasn’t been broadly deployed yet and there are no handsets that take advantage of it, 2) I get the feeling that consumers aren’t going to buy a marketing message that goes, “our 3G network is faster than their 4G network for file downloads” because 4 is a bigger number than 3, and who really cares about file downloads? Are people really downloading files all day to their phones?

I then walked all the way back to the other end of the convention center again for Sprint’s big press conference. First thing you notice: no chairs here, either. Then the music hits ear-splitting levels because event people seem to believe this will pump you up and make you more receptive to the message to come. In actual fact, it makes it harder to hear the message to come because you have been temporarily been rendered deaf. Sprint’s message was worth hearing, and boiled down to, “our 4G network is faster than their 3G network, and we’ve got an insane phone, HTC’s EVO 4G, that can use the network to do cool things, like watching YouTube in HD.” (Of course, if you want to download files for some reason, you can do that, too.) Sprint did a great job showing how the combination of high end hardware and a fast network can create a unique user experience, and the EVO 4G launch was clearly the high point of the show.

However, the show was not yet over, and it was time to walk halfway back to the other end of the convention center again, this time for a quick meeting with an OS vendor and then on to moderate a panel discussion about why we have a dozen mobile operating systems. Goes well.

Out for a quick dinner, and on to Pepcom’s Mobile Focus, which is a lot like Showstoppers only with more handset vendors. I had missed a Kyocera analyst event while I was doing the panel, so I stopped by their table for some quick hands on time with the new Zio (an undifferentiated Android phone, but one that could cause RIM some trouble in the prepaid market). I then moved to Dell’s table where an Aero was sitting on the table next to Dell’s new Android phones for Brazil and China. Unfortunately, Dell wouldn’t allow the Aero to be powered up, so here’s what I know: It’s a thin, plastic device running Android [unknown] version with an [unknown] user interface overlay with [unknown] features and is coming to AT&T at [unknown] date at [unknown] price. When a client asked what my analytical option was, I replied with [unknown] insights.

At HTC’s table, they confirm that an HD2 is on the way to my house. That’s great, but I could really have used it at the show – it comes preloaded with the Transformers movie, which I have not seen but it has to be better than the terrible drama Continental is showing on the West-to-East route on the way home. At Sony Ericsson’s table, get hands on time with all the phones launched last month at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona; I missed the launch event there because Samsung scheduled its Wave press insanity at the same time. I already have an XPERIA X10, so it was a bit of a shock to see the X10 mini. This isn’t a smaller version of the X10, it’s a Honey-I-Shrunk-The-Phone version of the X10. I wonder if any of the X10’s user experience can translate to such a small form factor. Even the full size phones aren’t necessarily that big – the Vivaz is a wisp of a phone that does not look like it is big enough to have HD video recording capabilities.

I skipped further evening festivities to return to my room, attempt to write that Palm report again, and pass out.

CTIA Day 2: I skipped a breakfast meeting where Samsung talked LTE and instead actually finished the Palm report, then started writing up the EVO 4G before heading over to the convention center for late morning meetings. The first one was with a silicon vendor in the meeting room area, which is at the absolute back of Central Hall. Next, it was halfway back to the North Hall for AT&T’s annual press and analyst lunch. You know what’s great about lunch meetings? No, not the food – I keep strictly kosher and don’t eat at most of these events – but you’re pretty much guaranteed to have chairs. AT&T switches things up and doesn’t talk about the speed of its network at all, focusing instead on devices: it has the highest smartphone penetration rate of any carrier in the world, and the rest of its lineup has been overtaken by “QMDs,” which sounds like a weapon stockpiled by dictators, but is actually AT&T’s term for QWERTY featurephones. AT&T also showed off a tablet not made by Apple, and AT&T is making a serious push into connecting every device you can buy at Best Buy. Seriously, that’s Glen Lurie’s goal for his next performance review. Good luck, Glen!

Unfortunately, I had to leave early to make my next meeting with a handset vendor whose booth is way in the front of Central Hall. While walking the half mile or so, AGAIN, it occurs to me that this is the first time I have set foot on in the Expo at all. I didn’t actually have a chance to see any of the booths at that point because that meeting was followed by two others with a regional U.S. carrier and a distributor. On my way out to get dinner I was waylaid by representatives from two clients; we catch up, they ask for a recap of the show so far, and we tell funny stories to each other until my brain points out that if I get dinner I will not collapse from hunger. And, as a bonus, I will get to sit down.

After dinner, it’s off to a 3 hour Nokia strategy event for analysts where Nokia does a credible job of explaining its Symbian roadmap but doesn’t inspire confidence that the company will be a force in North America any time soon.

After this, several members of my team head to AT&T’s party, but I go back to the hotel to do more writing and pack up for the return flight.

CTIA Day 3: Scramble to edit staff reports on Samsung’s Galaxy S and Kyocera’s Zio before heading to the convention center for one last meeting. Look at my automatically-generated boarding pass and realize that my flight boarding time has been pushed up, so I cancel my morning vendor meeting. Then Continental delays the flight. The meeting is back on, but I don’t want to risk missing the flight in case the delay is reduced, so I run the entire way to the convention center and back. Get to the airport fairly quickly (if you use I-15 and ignore the signs to the airport, you can cut the drive to the rental car return area significantly) and encounter no hassles returning the car, which is mildly miraculous. Security lines are long, but I’m through with plenty of time to sit for hours with Eric Zeman of Phonescoop while Continental finds a plane that flies properly. The 4:50 flight boards before our 2:20 flight. Once on board, the flight attendant asks us to turn off all BlackBerries, blueberries, strawberries, boisenberries, and Halle Berries. Cute. I tweet, “Cue Sheryl Crow – I’m Leaving Las Vegas” and shut down.

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Another Mobile World Congress in Barcelona has come and gone, and this one was clearly Microsoft’s show. “Windows Phone 7 Series” is nearly impossible to say out loud, but the OS itself meets the user interface bar set by Apple and Palm while tying together all of Microsoft’s consumer brands. I got hands on time with a prototype and was impressed, but if you want an early look yourself, you don’t need to be an analyst with access to high level Microsoft executives, you just need to scrape together $220 and buy a Zune HD. Zune lends WP7 both its user interface conventions and its PC software for media management, synchronization, and purchase. Microsoft still needs to convince developers to support the platform, but the company is relevant in mobile again for the first time in years.

Microsoft wasn’t the only new OS being pitched at the show. Nokia and Intel are combining their respective mobile Linux efforts, Maemo and Moblin, to form MeeGo, a name apparently chosen because “Nokia Intel Maemo Moblin Series” would have been even more ridiculous. Once Nokia and Intel’s engineers hash out which pieces of code stay and which go, MeeGo will face the same challenges that Maemo had: a user interface unsuitable for mainstream users and few mainstream apps.

The most outrageous OS launch at Mobile World Congress belonged to Samsung. Samsung staged a press conference for the first Bada phone (the “Wave”) that borrowed equally from infomercials, Cirque du Soleil, and some Korean marketing insanity that didn’t quite make it across the cultural divide. I certainly didn’t get it: a television personality-type hyped the product while attendees were subjected to 360 degree surfing visuals, Samsung’s version of the Solid Gold dancers, and a floating Blue Fairy. It was bizarre.

Samsung’s stated goal with its new Bada mobile OS is to “democratize smartphones at all price points in all geographies,” which presumably means that it expects to ship the Bada OS on mid-tier featurephone hardware in emerging markets. It is taking an “intentionally operator-friendly approach,” though it has not defined what that means in practical terms. This is an intelligent vision; most smartphone vendors are locked in a war with Apple to provide the richest connected computing experience, which all but guarantees that the devices will require expensive high end hardware, and will be sold primarily in developed markets to consumers who can afford $600 devices or the data plans that subsidize them down to $200. The only company targeting emerging markets with entry-level smartphones is Nokia, and Samsung wants a big piece of that business.

The Wave itself is an impressive piece of hardware, highlighted by an 800×480 “Super AMOLED with mDINe” screen that demands superlatives: it is the best display I have ever seen. Holding the Wave next to my iPhone made the iPhone looked washed out and grainy, and even the AMOLED display on my Google Nexus One – cranked to full brightness – was visibly inferior next to the Wave. The Wave also runs a Samsung 1 GHz processor with intense graphics capabilities, has 8 GB of memory, a 5 MP AF camera, and can record HD video. Although I encountered numerous bugs even in the short time I had with the unit, performance was exceptionally snappy, and the Wave not only features the latest iteration of TouchWiz, but also a lot of the social network integration and unified messaging functionality found in devices from HTC with Sense or Palm’s webOS with Synergy.

That’s the good news. The problem is that the world does not need another mobile OS. Besides, Samsung’s Bada phone does not match its vision at all. The Wave – with its incredible screen and high-powered processor – is a product designed to compete with the iPhone or HTC Desire. Assuming that the Wave is priced in line with its bill of materials, no one in developing markets can afford one outside of the elite, who have plenty of high end smartphone choices already. The Wave would be quite competitive with those products in developed markets if it were based on a viable OS. Can Bada actually run on the low-end hardware that is required to bring the price down to featurephone levels? Can Samsung, which is best known for hardware components and design, deliver an SDK with intelligently designed APIs, rich developer tools, and build an effective developer relations program with global reach? While they work all this out, I have one request: Samsung, can I please have a Wave with Android 2.1? I want one pretty bad. Pretty please?

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