Apple and the Others…

Posted by Admin on Jun 23, 2011 in Tech | 5 comments

Written By: Haricharan

A recent survey on one of the top tech-review sites ran like this,

“Will Apple’s iMessage be the game-changer that the industry was waiting for ?”

Though, at this point, we are in no position to question its claim to be the Industry game-changer, but game changer it will be, in the mobile services domain.

For the uninitiated, Apple previewed its new Operating system iOS 5, at the World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, earlier this month. Slated for launch, early in fall, the Operating System for mobile devices has about 200 new features and the one that has created a buzz is the iMessage.

Cutting short the technical mumbo-jumbo – iMessage is included as part of the Messages App. It allows videos, photos contacts, group messages and text, along with delivery notification, read receipts, encryption and typing notification. Only BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) was previously offering such services and was (is) immensely popular in the corporate world.

It looks like Apple has thrown a spanner into the works. Not only is iMessage, incredously simple to use, but it is compatible and seamlessly integrated with the iCloud as well, which means, that you can start a conversation on your iPad and then move it on to your iPhone. iMessage can run over both 3G and Wireless, as well.

More importantly, iMessage is not limited to the iPhone; it can run on any iOS device.

The advantage that Apple has over RIM (Radio In Motion, the makers of BlackBerry) is that Apple’s devices are more practical, useful and fun. iOS already has a lion’s share of the mobile install base. Not only that, BlackBerry has about half a dozen useful apps, whereas Apple has more than half a million apps downloaded more than 15 billion times.

The survey results indicated that almost 50 % were of the opinion that the arrival of Apple in the domain of instant messaging was indeed good. 20% of the participants were in favor of Android – Google’s Operating System.

Though RIM has clearly denied the fact that iMessage is a competition to its BBM, it is quite evident that it has made a deep cut, right through RIM’s mobile business strategy. The best part of the whole announcement was that even the Carriers did not know that the iMessage was coming. How is that for taking the competition by surprise.

There have been rumors in the past and again after the WWDC that Google is building a mobile based Operating System that could change the way we use Smartphones and mobile devices.