Apple was a company that could do no wrong. Phones that dropped every other call… Location tracking scandals… Antennagate… A CEO who constantly parked his $130,000 sports car diagonally in handicapped spaces… Apple didn’t have to roll with the punches, the company would simply laugh at the punches or toss the press and public a few crumbs if need be. A week or even a day later, all was forgiven and Apple would continue on its path, making terrific products and mopping up industry profits while whistling to itself contently.

On Tuesday when Apple unveiled its brand new iPhone 4S, the fifth iteration of Apple’s revolutionary smartphone, things felt different. The company’s iconic co-founder was nowhere to be found, the venue was smaller, the applause seemed reticent and the product unveiled was not greeted with arms open quite as widely as they had been in the past. People seemed, in a way, bored.

Reactions from those who spent time with the device at Apple’s press conference were positive, of course, but it didn’t feel the same. What was different this time around? Members of the press and many consumers following the event felt that we were looking at a possible miss from the great Apple. Beyond nitpicking and whining about insignificant specs or other irrelevancies, many level-headed writers and pundits genuinely seemed to think that the iPhone 4S might be the beginning of the end.

Yes, investors were seemingly disappointed by Tuesday’s announcements, but this is hardly uncommon. Buy the rumor, sell the news. That Apple only closed down half a percent on Tuesday exhibits confidence in the company’s management, strategy and portfolio more than it does disappointment in the iPhone 4S.

And what about analysts? The finance crowd adores Apple, so they must have been jumping up and down in their penthouses, right?

“Apple no longer has a leading edge, its cloud service is even behind Android; it can only sell on brand loyalty now,” Gartner analyst C.K. Lu told Reuters on Wednesday. “Users may wait to buy the next iPhone; if they can’t wait, they may shift to brands with more advanced specs.”

“We had expected the company to announce two new devices, an iPhone 5 and a 4-plus,” JP Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz wrote in a note to investors. “We are disappointed that Apple did not introduce a thinner form factor, but we see the feature set improvements in the iPhone 4S and the broader pricing strategy as positives.”

Yes, we’re seeing some negative takes on the news, but have we seen any big names revise their estimates downward significantly? Of course not. Even analysts who were hugely bullish on a redesigned iPhone 5 are still confident that Apple’s reign will continue.

We’ve seen no real negative revisions on revenue projections either. In fact, Apple’s free iPhone 3GS and its $99 iPhone 4 have had the opposite effect in some cases. RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky, for example, wrote in a note Wednesday morning that Apple’s $0 3GS “may double Apple’s global addressable market, and may help address rising mid-market Android competition.”

And some analysts such as Wedge Partners’ Brian Blair had already modeled for this scenario. Blair, as some might recall, hit the nail on the head late last month. “We expect the focus of the new iPhone will be iOS 5, a speedier A5 processor and a higher resolution 8 MP camera with a small possibility of a larger 4 inch screen,” the analyst wrote in a research note on September 21st. Blair saw Apple selling 91 million iPhones this calendar year, and that staggering sum remains unchanged.

Some analysts even think the iPhone 4S and new cheaper iPhones 4 and 3GS will drive sales that exceed already-lofty projections. “While the moderate changes to the iPhone 4S might not drive the type of upgrade cycle that was seen by the iPhone 4, the lower prices of legacy models and broader availability on more carriers are still likely to deliver calendar Q4 phones sales in excess of our 21.5 million estimate,” BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk wrote on Wednesday.

But an interesting takeaway from yesterday’s announcement may simply be that Apple has fallen from grace in some respects. Apple is fallible, even if the 4S ends up being a success. A company that could do no wrong in recent history just, well, did wrong in the eyes of pundits who had previously viewed every Apple product announcement as a gift from the heavens.

It should have been bigger. It should have been better. It should have been more Appley.

There were skeptics after Apple unveiled the iPhone in 2007, and after the iPhones 3G, 3GS and 4 as well. But yesterday’s skeptics took a different tone. They didn’t wonder if Apple could succeed or nervously whine about missing features, they collectively shouted that Apple had lost its mojo.

But then there’s the imminent reality check. And from where I’m sitting, the iPhone 4S is oozing with mojo.

Apple’s iPhone 4 provides the most silky smooth user experience on the planet with the firm’s A4 processor running the show. The more powerful dual-core A5 chipset from Apple’s iPad 2 should somehow improve on that already-phenomenal experience, and it will empower Apple’s new golden child, Siri.

It should be noted that I was hugely skeptical of Siri’s significance ahead of Apple’s event on Tuesday, but I’m now singing a different tune. I think the concept and technology behind Apple’s new personal assistant service are phenomenal, and while Siri might not be a huge draw for consumers in the near term, the long-term implications are tremendous. Apple just made smartphones much, much smarter.

On the outside, there is no question that the iPhone 4S is the same device as its predecessor. It might have a revised antenna system, but the similarities are so great that Apple had to include the Newsstand icon in marketing images depicting the phone’s home screen as no distinction would be made otherwise. But is that such a bad thing? The iPhone 4 is still an engineering feat, and I’m not sure a more attractive smartphone exists to this day.

Naysayers said Apple couldn’t cut it selling just one or two smartphone models, and now Apple owns two-thirds of global smartphone industry profits. Led by Apple’s gray-haired iPhone 4, which launched in June 2010, Apple sold more smartphones last quarter than any other vendor on the planet.

The numbers will do the talking over the next few quarters, and I expect Apple’s iPhone sales to continue on the same skyward path right up to next year’s iPhone 5 launch and beyond. As of October 12th, Apple will sell three different smartphone models that range in price from free to $399. The company will address postpaid smartphone buyers from top to bottom, and rumors suggest we may even see an attack on the prepaid market in the near future. No company stays on top forever, of course, but Apple’s new smartphone lineup is hardly that of a company that has begun its descent.

Apple may have fallen from grace in a way, but until competitors can even come close to approaching the allure surrounding Apple devices and the user experiences they afford, don’t expect the company’s grip on the industry to loosen at all.

Today is the day that Apple CEO Steve Jobs and other executives will unveil the next advancements out of the industry’s leading innovator at WWDC 2011. While Apple has already announced that the company will be talking about three different main products — iOS 5, iCloud, and Mac OS X Lion — the fact is, Apple once again could possibly change (and influence) the entire way we use computers and mobile devices. Let’s look at iCloud, for example: if Apple is able to transition the device-centric approach to how we work with information and apps to a task-centric approach where the PowerPoint presentation you’re working on is what matters, and not what computer or tablet or smartphone you’re editing it from, that in itself a huge move forward in computing. Other companies have been trying to accomplish this for years, but we having a feeling that Apple is about to show us the beginnings of something so seamless, it really could find mass adoption, unlike most current solutions. Add in music, photos, videos, and your documents, and you should be able to pick up any computer or device and have access to all of your information and data from wherever you are. Coupled with a rumored Airport Extreme and TimeCapsule refresh in which the devices will run iOS and a feature an A4 or A5 processor, and all of your data could sit on one of your own devices and it would use your own internet connection to serve up your files directly to you. Lastly, what if iCloud allowed you to just walk up to any iOS or Mac computer and let you sign in, sit down, and practically act as if though it was your device or computer? What if Apple then implements this using NFC in the next iPhone — just place your iDevice next to a Mac computer, and it will instantly be transformed into your computer. Hit the break for more!

In iOS 5, Apple is rumored to have drastically redone a major pain-point for users: notifications. Though I’m sure Apple will show off redone notifications in iOS 5, I think it will be much, much more that that — iOS 5 will be the biggest change since the introduction of iOS in 2007. While Mac OS X Lion is all about simplifying and taking advantage of all the innovative things Apple has done to get rid of the frustrating experience of using a computer, I think iOS 5 will be about making iOS even more powerful, and a platform that will be capable of one day being a standalone computer operating system. Also, what if Apple decides that they’ve had enough with 3rd parties making messaging systems? They never introduced a real version of iChat, what if they created their own messaging network, not unlike BlackBerry Messenger? They have to see how valuable and useful all of these messaging services are. Additionally, iOS 5 should eliminate the need to sync your device — it’s all tied to your iCloud account. Your device is backed up and synced wirelessly, applications update in the background, OS updates are delivered wirelessly, and if you ever lose or replace a device, just sign in, and all your data is populated and everything is back.

With Mac OS X Lion, Apple will introduce features that make the Mac even more enjoyable to use. It will make people look back on the fact we had to save files — really, if you think about it, it’s insane that we’re forced to manage the data on a computer and make sure it’s saved and backed up — and make them feel like we were all living in the stone age. The entire philosophy of Apple is to offer the user a window and let everything else melt away and get out of the way. OS X Lion does that more so than any other OS X release, and it makes computing easier and more enjoyable for everybody.

I know Apple set expectations that we won’t be seeing any major hardware announcements, but a part of me does think it’s possible we’ll see an iPhone announcement of some sort. A guy can dream, right?

Apple’s magical iPad 2 launches in just a few short days, and fans of the Cupertino company’s wares can’t wait. Let us know what’s what and how you’re feeling about the iPad 2, alright? There’s no one better to ask than you. Also, if we haven’t covered you in the poll above, drop a comment with which way you’re leaning — Motorola XOOM? Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1? Let us know!

The Motorola ATRIX 4G is the fastest smartphone not yet on the market. Come March 6th, however, it will be. AT&T has landed a screamingly fast Android device courtesy of Motorola, and that’s not all. The device is so powerful that it can power a laptop with full Firefox browser, and spit out 1080p video like it’s nothing. We’ve spent almost a day time with the phone and thought it was sufficient for a review, so read on past the break for what we think, alright?

Hardware

The Motorola ATRIX 4G is one of the world’s fastest smartphone, literally. With a 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor, it’s a screamer. So much so, it can power a full netbook-like laptop accessory (we’ll touch on that later). As far as other specifications go, it’s one of the few Android handsets to feature a whopping 1GB of RAM. Rounding out the feature set is a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash and 720p video recording, the first qHD (quarter HD) display, second microphone for noise cancellation, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, front-facing video camera, HDMI port, and a fingerprint scanner for security that doubles as the on/off button.

When we picked up the ATRIX for the first time we were pleasantly surprised with how the materials felt. The device feels solid and well built, and we really love the size. It’s a tad bit thick, but since it’s nicely rounded on the edges, it feels thinner and more easy to hold than the HTC Inspire 4G to us, though the phone is incredibly slippery due to the matte black plastic casing. On the front of the ATRIX you’ll find the front-facing video camera in the upper left in addition to the proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, and notification LED on the upper right. Besides the four touch-sensitive Android menu keys on the bottom of the front, it’s pretty clean. Switching to the left side of the handset and you’ll find a microUSB port followed by a mini-HDMI port; on the right side of the phone there’s a volume up and down rocker. The on / off button is sneakily integrated into the fingerprint scanner on the top but towards the rear of the ATRIX, and while this bothered us a bit at first (only the inside part of the fingerprint sensor clicks in), it’s grown on us — plus we love using a fingerprint to unlock the handset. Moving to the back: you’ll find the 5 megapixel camera and LED flash,  a reasonably cool carbon fiber-esque pattern on the rear battery door, and the rear external speaker on the bottom of the phone.

Display

The 4-inch display on the ATRIX packs a whopping 960 x 540 pixels into what Motorola is calling a qHD display. While the resolution is quite high, the display to us still looked pretty pixelated. It’s a little odd that the display on the Motorola DROID X actually looks better than the qHD display, in terms of clarity. Colors, however, look great and the panel is very bright and evenly lit. The screen on the ATRIX also fares very well in the touch sensitivity department with a solid and reliable capacitative touch screen.

Software

The Motorola ATRIX 4G runs a version of the love-it-or-hate-it MOTOBLUR UI, and as much of an annoyance it can be sometimes, we’ve found that paired with the ATRIX, it’s not that big of a hindrance. Things run fast, smooth, and effortless, no doubt in thanks to that dual-core CPU, but again, the software UI on here isn’t that big of a deal, even if you are an Android purist.

Phone / Speaker

Talking on the ATRIX was excellent. Calls were very clear with the internal ear speaker sounding very natural, and extremely loud. Noise cancellation also performed well in noisy environments helping people on the other line to hear us more clearly. We also really love the layout of the phone dialer screen — the most recent call/contact is right above the number pad, it’s a nice little touch. You also have the ability to add a number right from the dialer to your contact list, and you have a voice command button right next to that. We can’t remember if this happened on other Motorola devices, but when you go into contacts in the phone app, you’re presented with only your direct contacts in your synced address books, not the ones that are scattered about the actual contacts app (suggested contacts, Twitter contacts from BLUR, Facebook contacts from BLUR, etc.)

The speaker on the ATRIX performed very well in our tests. Music played back reasonably loud without much distortion, though it lacked that low end punch. The speakerphone also performed great, projecting audio loud and clear.

Battery

We’ve only been using the Motorola ATRIX for around a day now, but we can definitely report that the battery life on here seems to be pretty great. It’s easily on par or even a level better than other Android phones we’ve used and tested. We don’t do too, too much calling, but downloading, installing and using apps, email, browsing, Twitter, Facebook, and more hasn’t knocked us off the preverbal battery pedestal one bit.

Laptop Dock

This is where the phone extends beyond a phone into something more, and it gets really interesting. As you might have heard and seen, the Motorola ATRIX has a couple accessory friends, and one of them is a laptop dock — a full fledged computer powered by the phone itself. Motorola told us that there is practically nothing in the laptop dock — no memory, no processor, nothing. In addition to containing basically an 11.6-inch screen, full keyboard, and built-in battery, the laptop dock actually doesn’t skimp on some essentials. The keyboard is backlit (who’d have thunk), there is an oversized trackpad, and it’s blended together in black aluminum and soft touch rubber.

A couple annoyances include the fact that the trackpad is not multitouch, which is a pretty big issue for scrolling — and we feel like a missed opportunity to extend gestures from the laptop dock to the phone. Since the phone literally runs and is displayed on the laptop screen in it’s own window, you have to literally click and drag your finger to swipe on the phone’s display — a nice little two finger swipe gesture would have been great there, for instance. It’s also very cumbersome to use the left and right mouse trackpad buttons as they are hard to push and don’t have great tactile feedback. Additionally, the black metal gets very, very smudgy and greasy even though we’re clean freaks and weren’t eating those delicious Lay’s Salt & Vinegar chips — we swear!

Speaking of the phone running on that laptop’s screen, this literally blows our minds. You have the phone displayed on screen and it’s directly manipulatable by you — you have the four Android buttons on screen, and can do anything you’d want to do from your phone. It’s also super useful as times since you get a full computing-like experience but still have your phone front and center to handle text messages, or whatever you’d want to do. The laptop dock uses the phone’s built in HSPA+ connection so there are no extra charges at all (provided you have the tethering/hotspot $20 plan), in addition to providing you with free AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot access wherever you might be. You also might be wondering what happens if you get a phone call when you’re connected to the laptop… you can make and take calls just fine. The phone goes into speakerphone and Motorola let us know that a built-in microphone was optimized for this mode and we do have to say, it works really well.

The initial honeymoon period with the laptop dock quickly wore off, and here’s why… When purchased with the ATRIX, the laptop dock is bundled for $499 ($199 for the device, $299 for the laptop dock). Purchased separately, the laptop dock is priced at $499. Let’s throw out the possibility of buying the laptop dock separately since in our minds, that’s out of the question. The question is if the laptop dock — a single purpose accessory for your smartphone — is worth $300, and we’d unfortunately have to say that we don’t think it is. While on paper it sounds great, and even in person it looks amazing, most of the excitement is lost when you use the laptop dock. We aren’t in love with the keyboard or the trackpad, and navigation was a frustrating experience for us. Not because of the software or processor, but because of the hardware on the laptop. Additionally, while you have your phone front and center with a full-fledged Firefox browser, that’s all you get and that’s not going to be enough for most people. Especially when for $300-$500 you can buy a pretty solid netbook-like device that will do much more than extend your smartphone — it will be a full computer which can be used with your ATRIX’s mobile hotspot feature.

One last thing about the laptop dock which we loved: there’s a built-in battery and that battery powers the laptop dock in addition to the phone. So think about this… you charge the laptop dock, jump on a plan, work on Wi-Fi for 5 hours, grab your phone and close the laptop when you land, and your phone is fully charged. Pretty impressive to us.

Media Dock

The Motorola Media Dock is another accessory friend the Motorola ATRIX works with, and it’s pretty nifty. The dock connects to your TV with an HDMI cable and extends the device to your home entertainment center with little effort. You can browse and play your music, photos, and HD videos right from the phone, even 1080p video content plays back just fine. There’s one more piece to the puzzle, however. The media dock also lets you run Motorola’s webtop app experience and will save the state you’re in whether you are using the laptop dock or media dock, which is very cool. This is the same concept that the laptop dock features — your phone in a window on the big screen with the application down at the bottom and the full Firefox browser. Navigating with the included remote is a non-starter, so what’s a man to do to get his big screen, dual-core smartphone-powered, browsing on? Well, you can connect a USB mouse and keyboard, but that’s not ridiculously fun, so Motorola has a Bluetooth keyboard you can purchase which works great in this set up.

UPDATE: We’re waiting for clarification on if the media dock comes with the Bluetooth keyboard and mouse

The Verdict

The Motorola ATRIX 4G is a very impressive product that brings an impressive set of accessories and peripherals to market that extend the smartphone into something much, much more. Looking at the phone specifically, it’s a feature-packed Android 2.2 device that has a vivid, high resolution screen, and a screaming fast dual-core CPU making it the fastest phone in the market. We didn’t honestly notice the phone to be that much faster than normal 1GHz-powered handsets, except under extreme circumstances, but that’s expected. We’d say without question that the Motorola ATRIX 4G is one of the best Android smartphones to ever be available from AT&T. The accessories it brings with it aren’t going to push you to buy the smartphone, but the concepts are pretty wild and really do widen your eyes and make you step back to see what cellphones nowadays are capable of doing, and doing well. The fact we’re at a time where a phone can power a full computer is incredible, and it’s great to see a fine device like the ATRIX 4G be the first to do it. If you’re ready to go, you’ll have to wait just a little longer to get your hands on one, as the device is available for pre-order starting this Sunday and is set to be released on March 6th for $199.

Click on over to our Motorola ATRIX 4G gallery!

Rumors of a Verizon Wireless iPhone have swirled since even before the first iPhone was actually announced — you might remember the rumor that both Verizon and AT&T (then Cingular) would sell the device. Fast forward to the last couple of months, and countless articles have appeared from mainstream media publications like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times in addition to countless other publications and blogs reporting on Verizon-related iPhone news. The consensus is that AT&T will lose its exclusivity in the United States after December 31st of this year, and that Verizon Wireless will begin selling the iPhone starting in the first quarter of next year. Let’s assume that Verizon Wireless will get the iPhone in that timeframe for the purpose of this article.

How will the phone be introduced? A typical Steve Jobs last-minute intimate Apple Town Hall gathering? A press release? Well, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg kicks off CES 2011 with a keynote presentation. The keynote will undoubtedly focus heavily on Verizon’s newly-launched 4G (that’s not really 4G). That in itself complicates the possibility of an iPhone announcement at CES. Could Ivan Seidenberg — while describing how LTE is the future of Verizon’s wireless network in this country; how it’s fast enough to replace your home broadband; how it enables more usage scenarios than traditional 3G networks — also announce a CDMA iPhone? Or better yet, could he invite Steve Jobs out to announce a Verizon iPhone? If the Verizon iPhone will support LTE, we’d say this was a slam dunk. However, only very new (and very unreliable) rumors have pointed to any sort of LTE compatibility in a Verizon iPhone. Is it possible, yes. Likely? Probably not (in our opinion).

That leaves option two: an announcement from Apple later in January. This would enable Steve Jobs to make the big announcement himself, under his own terms, while not countering Verizon’s huge LTE push. If a Verizon iPhone ends up being CDMA-compatible and not LTE-compatible out of the gate, expect Steve Jobs to detail how much Apple is interested in LTE, though the technology isn’t quite there yet and battery life would suffer, coverage isn’t great, and so on. It’s also then possible for Apple to introduce a new global iPhone in June or July during its WWDC conference — think GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HSPA/LTE + CDMA all in one chipset… but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Those are our two scenarios: a CES introduction from Verizon Wireless if the handset is LTE-compatible, or an Apple introduction sometime in January if the handset is a CDMA device. There isn’t any information that says either of our predicted scenarios will happen, but it would be a show stopper to be announced at CES. A phone that’s been available for almost six months globally, that will become available on another carrier in the U.S., could overpower every single mobile phone announcement at the entire Consumer Electronics Show. Just the way Steve Jobs likes it.

George Colony, founder and CEO of Forrester Research, keeps a blog that “contains ideas, observations, and analyses to help drive the success of other CEOs.” In a post yesterday, Mr. Colony bluntly stated that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is, to date, “a one-trick pony.” In acknowledging that Facebook is an excellent concept, Mr. Colony also writes that Mr. Zuckerberg has not “morphed” Facebook all that much from its original form. It is still the same idea, and for that reason, the market-research company’s CEO is skeptical.

“We didn’t declare Andy Grove a great CEO based on Intel’s domination of the dynamic random access memory market,” writes Mr. Colony. “But when he survived a close brush with bankruptcy, pivoted the company into microprocessors, and teamed with Microsoft to dominate personal computers, we recognized what a great CEO he had become.” The article also cites Steve Jobs’ ability to turn his creativity into “important products across three generations of customers and four unique generations of computing,” as an example.

“Zuckerberg appears to have the raw material to be a great CEO,” the post continues, “but we won’t know if he is or isn’t until he creates a new popular product or morphs Facebook into a monetary engine that justifies its current irrational valuation.” It seems as though Forrester’s CEO is saying what many — especially those on Wall Street contemplating a Facebook IPO — are thinking.

Now, George Colony may be getting a bit ahead of himself, as both Andy Grove and Steve Jobs have had decades to prove their mettle. But the article does foster great discussion points about Zuck, Facebook, and the privately held company’s $33 billion valuation. So sound off! We want to know what you think about the world’s largest social network, its CEO, and its current price-tag.

Thanks, C!

[Image credit: The New York Times]

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It has been four years since the launch of Boy Genius Report and I can easily say that I have enjoyed every single day while working on growing, expanding, and continuing to break the biggest stories in the mobile category. Today, Boy Genius Report is growing up. We are finally switching over to the www.bgr.com domain (though www.bgr.com will still continue to work as a redirect) and the first phase of our expansion is underway. We have hired more full-time writers in the past 4 months than we have had in the past four years and we are definitely not stopping. Today, I’m super excited to introduce the new redesign for BGR that has been in the works for several months. It encompasses everything the brand is — authentic, cleanly designed, relatable, and of course, that indescribable edge that it won’t ever lose.

Every segment of the site has been redone and reworked. From our Featured Articles and Top Stories area at the top of the page which will enable us to feature a wide variety of content, a brand new gallery which enables our photos and albums to be consumed even faster, to a new commenting system (finally!) which will promote an even higher level of communication between our readers. It also includes informational resources like BGR Analysis, places to meet the editors of BGR and to check out our thoughts, predictions, commentaries, and much, much more. The new BGR is everything that I have envisioned it to be for a long time.

Thank you guys for making us the number 1 mobile site (and the number 4 tech site in the world, according to Technorati!). We are plugging away harder and harder every day to continue delivering the highest quality breaking news, original content, and of course, that original BGR voice that you love. There are many more exciting things in the works, and I can’t wait to share them with you.

Of course, drop those comments in — we want to know what you think of the new design!

RIM’s sell to the carriers back in the day, who were incredibly hesitant on supporting the “wireless data revolution,” was that RIM’s architecture and back-end infrastructure meant carriers could trust them to optimize and in a sense, load balance their users (BlackBerry subscribers). This worked great when people were sporting monochrome displays and transferring little bits of data over GPRS networks. It was smart, and you know what, it was necessary. The thing is, we’re in a year called 2010, and if you haven’t noticed, people are doing all sorts of things on wireless networks. RIM’s pitch to carriers about data conservation doesn’t mean a single thing. It’s just another scam, and another bullshit tired line while RIM constantly delivers lackluster news and updates.

Wireless networks are being positioned to one day take over regular data at home. There’s the already-launched WiMAX service and the upcoming 4G roll outs from AT&T and Verizon in the U.S. alone. Do you really expect carriers to give one shit about BlackBerry’s “conserving” data when people are buying MiFi devices and having their entire mobile office jump on their networks? While people are downloading torrents over 3G, streaming video, downloading MP3s, and running servers from their data cards? What’s so scary is that looking forward, data conservation isn’t the answer. It’s the opposite. You need to support what people want, and people don’t conserve. That’s just the way it is, and manufacturers don’t care about the carriers like RIM does, let alone people. People leave their water running while people are dying of thirst. People buy things they don’t and won’t ever need. You think people really give two shits about data on their smartphones? No.

Data conservation is why almost every data-related activity on a BlackBerry is painful. That’s why I have to wait for my email to load when I scroll down too fast, because RIM is “conserving that data.” That’s why my attachment viewing experience is so fucking terrible that I forward all of my attachments to my iPhone. That’s why file sending is non-existent on a BlackBerry, because it chunks the data into little kilobyte packages and makes it useless.

Things that might have worked a couple of years ago are already outdated, and things that worked ten years are instantly a non-starter. This is just another sad sign that either RIM is delaying their entire reinvention, or they’re slowly losing it with each passing day. Since I’m a RIM-loving BlackBerry-toting thoroughbred, I surely hope it’s the former, though none are exactly ideal.

I mean, Microsoft is hot again…

Avril Lavigne. Luke Wilson. Whoopi Goldberg. Those three names don’t exactly jump out and immediately connect with us when we see them. And isn’t that the point of advertising? The point of branding? To connect to something, identify with it, and relate to it. Sure jazzy music and clean visuals (or dark, ominous tones with scary eyes) will help liven up your advertisement, but if you’re bringing a celebrity in to help, why don’t you make sure the celebrity is someone that people actually care about? I don’t mean to knock on Luke or Whoopi as I’m a fan of both (Canada can have Sk8ter chick), but while they might be intended to reach a certain demographic, in actuality they don’t help, they hurt. People pass it off as something they don’t care about. There’s no instant reaction or memorable moment that people will immediately remember or associate with any of those commercials.

Luke Wilson is brilliant. But he’s not relevant right now. That’s not to say it’s a bad thing, he just isn’t as visible as he was a couple years back. Once he has a bang up movie come out, I’m sure we’ll all care again, but right now, we don’t. And to pick Luke Wilson to carry your entire ad campaign is mind-shattering and stupid. Of all the people in the world, that’s the best your agency came up with? How about Ben Affleck? He would have killed it. Hell, Matt Damon would have, too, and all he wants to do is help kids (NSFW). What, too expensive? Even if AT&T spent $10M in talent alone for awesome brand ambassadors, that’s still not too much to spend when you need to defend your network against the largest, and most solid network in the country with some of the smartest attack ads ever played. People want to root for their hometeam, their city, their favorite company, and AT&T doesn’t give them a chance to do so. No one is going to stick up for Luke Wilson’s commercials.

Either of those two aforementioned people would have been funnier, more personable, and could actually strengthen brand opinion in a time when you needed slam dunk ad rebuttals.

I love AT&T. I really do. I love the flexibility I get with switching phones, I love that the technology that I care about is 99.99% always going to be GSM-based. I honestly don’t have that many issues with AT&T and think people really blow certain issues they encounter out of proportion. But it isn’t about what I think, it’s about mind share and people’s opinions. People that aren’t glued to the internet. Verizon was incredibly smart to start their Map For That campaign. It made people question their cell phone service provider much like we’d question if the last Avril Lavigne song we could remember was really from the year 2002.

Never before has anyone really attacked networks like Verizon did. It was always about the phone itself. My phone can MMS, my phone can browse the web, my phone can work anywhere in the world. But Verizon hit hard and said it doesn’t matter if you have an amazing cell phone, your network is shit and it won’t work where or when you want it to. T-Mobile also isn’t earning cool points while their subscribers continue to leave because their phones have gotten so bad and their brand is getting diluted as there’s no clear strategy. Get More? Come on. Motorola CLIQ? They’d be lucky if they moved 175,000 of those things since release. Behold II? The BlackBerry 9700 is the only thing T-Mobile has right now and that isn’t even a conquest device as AT&T offers it, so it’s a wash. Bring on the awesome ads that will make people stay on your network, ads that really connect with us and make us say, “You know what, I like T-Mobile, I’m going to ride this out.” It was a mistake getting rid of Catherine Zeta Jones, an amazing, beautiful, personable, and strong celebrity. It was also a mistake bringing her back. Why? Because no one cares. It’s an afterthought now.

T-Mobile is becoming the new Sprint.

What do we get for T-Mobile’s ads? Avril Lavigne, Whoopi Goldberg, Jesse James, and other people I’m not even going to bother tearing apart. T-Mobile’s myTouch celebrity picks are mind-numbing. The first ones were bad, but they at least sort of made sense from a marketing perspective. Whoopi Goldberg, Phil Jackson, and Jesse James appealed to three very different demographics but the problem was no one who needed to care, cares about any of them. No one went out and bought a myTouch because of Whoopi, Phil, or Jesse. It didn’t happen. Did stay at home moms see Whoopi and say, “I’m going to buy a myTouch”? Nope. Did people buy a myTouch because they saw Phil Jackson and thought, “OMG. The back of my phone can look like a basketball”? Nope. Did people buy the myTouch because Jesse James just looks like a bad ass? Maybe.

In all seriousness, the phone is what’s going to sell if you don’t have anyone that’s memorable, and that’s really the point of what I’m saying. If you’re going to do it, knock it out the park, don’t Luke Wilson it. AT&T could have done countless other things to rebut Verizon’s attacks and they didn’t have to involve a celebrity that we don’t connect with. T-Mobile is grasping at straws with their ads of the amazingly stupid-named myTouch with celebrities that we don’t care about. They’re both wasted campaigns that miss the mark by suits in marketing that obviously have no idea who they’re trying to sell to anymore. Me, you, your parents, your friends — we’re the potential customers, and we’re not stupid. Plus we’re cool.

There is no question that when it comes to blogger relations, Nokia is the undisputed heavyweight champion. No other handset manufacturer is as proactive in maintaining a good relationship with bloggers; in fact, no other company even comes close. Nokia recognizes that value that bloggers pose and as such, it offers multiple programs that provide open lines of communication, special event invitations and even trial handsets to bloggers. What’s more, these programs are hardly reserved exclusively for influential bloggers. Nokia values small and emerging blogger opinions as well and tries to include them as much as possible. All that having been said however, Nokia missed a real opportunity with the release of the E71. Sure, the company took its standard route and placed demo handsets with all of the usual Nokia-centric bloggers big and small. There was even a slight stray from convention with an unannounced and unpublicized “release event” at the Flagship store in Manhattan. The problem is that the audiences of all of these blogs have already been excited about the E71 for months. In fact, they had likely already made up their minds as to whether or not they’ll be purchasing one as well. The E71 is the perfect opportunity for Nokia to think outside the box and actually make a splash with the E71, especially here in the US. How? By specifically targeting BlackBerry blogs. Sure we gave them a taste and likely sent plenty of new customers Nokia’s way, but why should we do all the work? The E71 is the closest thing Nokia has to a BlackBerry competitor and coincidentally, BlackBerry fans recently learned that the highly anticipated Bold has been pushed back to September. Window = open. Do we need to keep spelling it out for you? Hit the BlackBerry blogs get them trial handsets. Get them writing about the E71 and get BlackBerry fans reading about it. Of course they’re not going to sing it praise entirely, but a Nokia handset would get great attention amongst new audiences and it might even boost sales a bit. Beyond that, Nokia would get some terrific feedback in terms of where the handset is lacking as compared to BlackBerry devices – beyond reception issues of course. Instead, Nokia is doing what seems to be par for the course here in the US and hoping that consumers do all the work themselves. /Marketing 101