The most accurate predictive letter in computing and telecommunications,
read by industry leaders worldwide.

 

 

 

In This Issue     Feature: The Smartphone Surprise    Nokia’s Comeback  Defining Smartphones  iPhones Change Everything  EMEA Segments Dynamically with the Economy   Quotes of the Week   Upgrades    Cellphones: For Paying  Twitter: For Grownups?   SNS Takeout Window   Snapshots of Rolling Market Share   Ethermail   Upcoming SNS Events & Media Links   In Other House News…    New Members’ Welcome  How to Subscribe  May I Share This Newsletter?  About SNS  About the Publisher   Where’s Mark?

“SNS is one of my essential reads. Mark wields one of the sharpest intellectual axes I know, yet he doesn’t really seem to have one to grind -- except perhaps the scientific search for the truth....”

– Robert Berkley, Managing Partner, GroupMV, West Tisbury, MA; in a forward of SNS to a friend.

 

SNS Members are encouraged to share this letter once per year per friend, with a cc: to us, which launches a 4-issue free trial for the recipient.

 

 

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Join us for the 8th Annual

 

Future in Review (FiRe) 2010 Conference

 

May 11-14, at Terranea, Palos Verdes

 

“The best technology conference   
         in the world.” – The Economist.

 

www.futureinreview.com

 

 

 

 

Latest additions:

 

“CyberWar: Today and Tomorrow,” with Joseph Menn, author, Fatal System Error;

 

Climate Refugees: A first look at this Sundance film, with director and creator Michael Nash (don’t forget, last year’s FiRe Film The Cove, by Louie Psihoyos, just pulled the Academy Award for Best Documentary);

 

“Scaling Alternative Energy”: An Opening Night talk by world expert Nathan Lewis, George L. Argyros Professor of Chemistry, Caltech; and

 

“Sustainable Housing”: Real and proposed sustainable dwellings, with Robert Bornn, Founder, Building Circles Organization.

 

 

This year’s theme: “Emerging Platforms”: Handhelds, Smartphones, Media Players, Pads, e-Books, Netbooks, Smartbooks, and (Repairing) the Cloud.

 

Participants and Speakers include (but are not limited to):

 

Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect, Microsoft

 

Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO, NVIDIA

 

Paul Jacobs, CEO, Qualcomm

 

Steve Squyres, Principal Investigator of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission (MER) and Goldwin Smith Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University; on “Finding Life on Mars”

 

A New Panel: “The Business and Technology Behind Hollywood”

 

John Cramer, Science Fiction Author and Professor Emeritus, Physics, University of Washington; on “Quantum Time Reversal”

 

John Delaney, Professor of Oceanography and Jerome M. Paros Endowed Chair in Sensor Networks, and Director, Regional Scale Nodes Program, University of Washington; on building the world’s first broadband ocean-floor remote sensing network

 

Plus:

 

Eric Darmstaedter, CEO, ClearFuels Technology

 

Chris Hancock, CEO, AARNet

 

Ricardo Salinas, Chairman of the Board, Grupo Salinas

 

And many, many more (see “Upcoming SNS Events” for more details)

 

 

» The Smartphone Surprise

 

There are plenty of historic reasons to restrain one’s enthusiasm over so-called smartphones: they have been very expensive, and so, limited in appeal and sales; there are no standards to unify them in the developer community; and the industry has not even properly defined them.

 

That was yesterday.