Smartphone wars: Apple marketshare soon to be usurped

I can't wait to see Cortex A5 phones (cheaper than ARM11, almost as powerful as Cortex A8) starting to arrive later this year. We should start seeing under $100 Android smartphones by the end of the year, and we'll probably see $50 smartphone sometime next year.

All this means bad news for Nokia especially, but even for RIM in the consumer market.

I don't think so. Everything I love about my phone is possible only because the company that built the hardware also wrote the software. Whenever there is any kind of wedge driven between hardware and software, the resulting experience suffers, which costs me time and frustration (and a tiny bit of my life in the process).

Software is the soul of a device, and hardware is its body. Either component in isolation fails to provide a useful, functioning device. It follows, then, that when the hardware and software are developed together that the most well-functioning device possible may be achieved.

Not just handset manufacturers:

Cheap Chinese takeout is also going to be tough on the carriers. The problem here will be the collapse of the contract system and increasing phone sales through third parties like Walmart.