Fragmentation in the mobile market is happening at an exponential rate at the moment, with new devices hitting the stores and web channels every day. These devices are getting smarter all of the time and soon we will only see smartphones, as we know them today, being built by the major manufacturers. Email, web and even GPS will become standard and the general public will accept nothing less. We are also seeing the importance of core functions such as reliability and power drop down the list and many of the smartphones released today have specific issues around these areas.

I asked some of the people who write about the smartphone market for their views and here is what they said-

Murray Alexander from Palm-Mac

1/ Do you think that the current fragmentation in the mobile market is a good thing, and which mobile OS’s do you expect to be dominant in 2 years time?

Well, choice is always a good thing, or so they say but is there too much choice...palm win mob symbian apple iPhone symbian UIQ and more. Does it hold back uniform development as the individual platforms fight for supremacy and that mythical killer app to hog market share?

I imagine I will be using Palm Nova or iPhone in 1 years and 2 years time. 

2/ Do you believe that we have lost some of the core functionality in the past few years at the expense of more and more features being crammed into a tiny device? i.e. poorer battery life, less reliability.

Too many devices are too complicated and stuffed with stuff that most people don't need in a mobile device...hence the success of the iphone which is a simple device that gives the punters as opposed to power users what they want/need on a mobile device.

Tam Hanna from Tamoggemon

1/ Do you think that the current fragmentation in the mobile market is a good thing, and which mobile OS’s do you expect to be dominant in 2 years time?

Fragmentation can be a good or bad thing. For an opensource project with 50 people, fragmentation is bad. But...we aren't talking about a small project here...we are talking about big companies.

Competition leads to development(even though some left idealodies have problems with this idea)...

As for the dominant operating system...at the current stage of the procedures, it is very harf to make an edicated guess. WinMob will definitely stay around, Apple's System will too. As for Symbian(and WM Smartphone), they will definitely be under pressure from Linux...but I am not sure how this particular thin will turn out.

2/ Do you believe that we have lost some of the core functionality in the past few years at the expense of more and more features being crammed into a tiny device? i.e. poorer battery life, less reliability.

No.

Luca Morandi from PDA Thoughts

1/ Do you think that the current fragmentation in the mobile market is a good thing, and which mobile OS’s do you expect to be dominant in 2 years time?

I think that the current fragmentation in the mobile market is a good thing, because it will probably boost innovation- which is needed as it sometimes looks as if no progress was made in the past few years. I can only hope that the fragmentation will not slow down the development of applications for all operating systems. I think that in the current situation, Windows Mobile will remain the dominant platform in the mobile industry.

2/ Do you believe that we have lost some of the core functionality in the past few years at the expense of more and more features being crammed into a tiny device? i.e. poorer battery life, less reliability.

I certainly believe that we have lost some of the core functionality over the years, like decent speed. Of course nowadays devices have to cope with much heavier tasks, but the speed should still be better from my point of view. Reliability is one of the things that only got better, at least in my situation. Windows Mobile 6 Professional is more stable then Palm OS Garnet. Battery life is something we sacrified for the sake of more power and smaller devices, but maybe this will change when new battery technology arrives.

So, there are some opinions. Expect some more soon…

Mark/Space is pleased to announce the availability of a Leopard-compatible update to SyncTogether.

SyncTogether 1.0.2 includes updates that improve the functionality of SyncTogether when used with Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard. Installation of this update is required to use SyncTogether with Leopard.

A market research survey released by Magmic Games and Information Solutions Group (ISG), users of mobile entertainment products on smartphone devices responded overwhelmingly that smartphone devices provided a superior entertainment experience than traditional feature-phone handsets. The results also indicate that playing games on smartphone devices is becoming the dominant method of gaming for those users compared to other gaming platforms.
Key findings of the survey:
• 90 percent of respondents who play games felt that gaming on a BlackBerry device or other smartphone device was a superior experience to that of a traditional feature-phone device
• 91 percent of respondents who prefer playing games on a BlackBerry device or other smartphone device said that they would be unlikely to switch back to a traditional feature phone for entertainment products, citing the better image quality, larger screen size, easier controls and easier product downloading all as important factors
• Over half (51 percent) of respondents said that they played games on their BlackBerry device or other smartphone device more than on any other type of gaming platform/hardware (computer, console, handheld, arcade, etc.); among women only, this figure was 60 percent
• 83 percent of respondents fell within the 22-49 age segment...

More at cellular news. Thanks to Luca.

Today's free eBook is In the Dreamtime of Lady Resurrection by Caitlín R. Kiernan- "How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?

–Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley (October 15th, 1831)

“Wake up,” she whispers, as ever she is always whispering with those demanding, ashen lips, but I do not open my eyes. I do not wake up, as she has bidden me to do, but, instead, lie drifting in this amniotic moment, unwilling to move one instant forward and incapable of retreating by even the scant breadth of a single second. For now, there is only now; yet, even so, an infinity stretches all around, haunted by dim shapes and half-glimpsed phantasmagoria, and if I named this time and place, I might name it Pluto or Orcus or Dis Pater. But never would I name it purgatorial, for here there are no purging flames nor trials of final purification from venial transgressions. I have not arrived here by any shade of damnation and await no deliverance, but scud gently through Pre-Adamite seas, and so might I name this wide pacific realm Womb, the uterus common to all that which has ever risen squirming from mere insensate earth. I might name it Mother. I might best call it nothing at all, for a name may only lessen and constrain this inconceivable vastness..."