Apple completes comeback in the computer market

Once upon a time, in the late eighties, the Apple Macintosh accounted for over 10 percent of the personal computer market. Back then, the Mac was the only choice for ease-of-use, window driven computing, opposed to the dull and difficult DOS system running on PCs.

This was before the Microsoft Windows revolution, which eroded Apple’s position, and resulted in a sharp drop in Apple’s market share to as little as 2 percent at some stage in the late nineties.

What has happened since then? The simple answer is Apple’s brilliance in re-inventing itself in the age of the Internet, where the significance of operating systems has dwindled in the face of the importance of connectivity.

Apart from the fact that Macintosh OS X is a better operating system than Windows XP or Vista, whereby many users are leaning towards Apple computers anyway, the more important dvelopment has been the standardization of file formats and the crucial ability of any computer to run ‘Internet applications’ such as email, search, social networking and others. This means Windows, Mac OS, Linux or even Symbian are all the same to users.

On top of the Internet revolution, Apple made some smart moves in recent years, replacing the Motorola processors which ran the Macintosh, with Intel processors, thereby providing even more compatibility with Windows standards.

Add to that the rise of laptops, and the fact Apple still produces the ‘hottest’ and best looking laptop computers, and it becomes apparent that Apple is not just the iPod/iTunes company this decade, but it’s hitting back in its core business.

Taking a look at recent figures, Apple’s share of the US laptop market jumped into double figures during Q2. According to local market watcher, NPD DisplaySearch, Apple took 10.6 per cent of the US retail laptop market between April and June 2008, up from 6.6 percent in the year-ago quarter. That puts it in fourth place in NPD's chart, behind Acer (14.4 percent), HP (21.4 percent) and Dell (21.9 percent).

European and Middle Eastern (EMEA) buyers are less keen on Apples, though, as the company doesn’t yet make it into the top five. Apple’s EMEA marketshare is less than 5.5 per cent.

But, global markets have a tendency to follow the US, and as our region gravitates towards more laptops and less desktops, Apple’s comeback will be complete even here. It’ll be another thing for Middle Eastern Mac fans to brag about!

zanasser@gmail.com

Serious competition in the web browsing market

Once upon a time, browsing the Internet was simple. You had Internet Explorer pre-installed into Windows 98, and if you were an ‘old timer’ who knew a bit about early browsers you would have tried the now defunct Netscape Navigator.

But, as the Internet energized the worldwide development community to cooperate to produce open source applications, Mozilla Foundation evolved, Firefox emerged, and the real choice we’ve had every since then has been either IE or Firefox.

Not forgetting, of course, the ‘boutique’ browsers like Opera- mainly a hit on mobile phones and gaming devices- and Apple’s Safari which has recently also become available for Windows PCs.

Anyway, let’s focus on the big two, which have just become a big three.

Why? Well, because Google has decided to launch a browser!
When Google enters any market, it’s big news and quite worrying for competitors.

With it’s Internet browser, Chrome, it seems Google wants to serve users with even more. So, it seems the web browser, a very important application you’re using everyday, is now getting the competition it deserves. Your Web browser is probably the most important program on your computer, and it’s now getting the competition it deserves.

Mozilla Firefox is outstanding and thoroughly deserves it’s market position as Microsoft’s real challenger, now accounting for nearly a quarter of the worldwide browser market.

Microsoft is not sitting still, as you would expect, especially with the upcoming release of IE’s new version. Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 looks good.
Now, to look at the ‘new kid on the block’, Google Chrome (http://google.com/chrome) is now available for Windows XP and Vista, as Google says it’s working on Mac and Linux versions.

Within a week of it’s launch, Chrome grabbed 1% of the browser market, and continues to attract users.

Apart from the “InPrivate browsing” feature, which lets you visit sites without the browser keeping any record of your activity there, there’s little that Chrome offers which the other browsers don’t.

In fact, it comes up short in comparison. It’s just too simple, at least at this stage of it’s development. You an count on Google to fix this, and challenge both IE and Firefox, and this can only be good news for users.

zanasser@gmail.com

Middle East is 2nd fastest region worldwide in Internet growth

Although we keep on hearing that ‘the Chinese and Indians are coming’, we’re not doing to bad ourselves!

Apparently, the growth in Internet traffic in the Middle East has doubled every year since 005, and we now stand in 2nd position in terms of growth worldwide, second only to- you guessed it- the Chinese!

What has happened is that connectivity became more available, at lower prices, in the Middle East. And, of course, users have acquired ‘a taste’ for high bandwidth services and now enjoy online video as a daily past-time.

These facts, and more, have been revealed by a telecommunications research and advisory firm, called TeleGeography. This study examines global internet traffic, which is defined as “a measure of how much data are being sent across the world”.
Traffic has increased worldwide by 53 percent in the 12 months to June.
In the Middle East, the number of Internet users has risen 10-fold in the past three years alone!

And, traffic has followed, surging 97 percent a year since 2005.
The only region that has grown faster is South Asia, at an average annual rate of 103 percent.

As expected, the slowest growing regions are the ones that already enjoy high Internet penetration, such as North America, which increased its Internet traffic by more than 50 percent each year on average anyway. To this day, North America is still the world’s largest consumer of internet bandwidth.

Looking to the future, there are fears of ‘bottle-necks’ and infrastructural concerns, similar to Internet blackout that occurred in January and February this year when the under-sea cables got cut. This precarious situation arose because the Middle East is connected to the rest of the world by only a handful of undersea cables.

Which explains why there’s a race to create more cables, and manage them locally or regionally. The report sites this saying that “every major telecommunications company in the region is involved in one or more international cable projects, with more than $1 billion of investment in new capacity announced last year alone.”

It sounds like good news, and it seems these developments will help us finally make the impression we should on the global Internet map!

zanasser@gmail.com

Web 2.0 fraud

People always wonder what Web 2.0 means. It's simply a term to describe "the new Internet", call it "version 2" of the Internet, if you like, which has been evolving for around three or four years now.

What the term has now come to resemble is the ongoing social networking and digital media sharing revolution, coupled with all the neat user-experience features you find on websites and the free nature of Internet services. The champions of this movement have been Google (as facilitator and free service provider), Facebook (the best example of social networking), YouTube (the showcase of user file sharing and distribution); and there are many more, but you get the idea.

Anyway, like everything else in the digital age, there's a negative, malicious side to Web 2.0. Not only are there Facebook and MySpace worms, but hackers have recently managed to break into user accounts and blogs on these services, utilizing the user identity to communicate with the world. Even 'phishers' have now got in on the game, taking their scams to these social networking communities.

For those who are not aware of 'phishing', it's a term that refers to attempts to get your personal data, through either communicating with you under the guise of an organization you know. If you get an email from your bank, asking you to send them your account number and password, or your credit card number, rest assured it's a phishing scam!

Apart from the usual scrouges of viruses, hacking and phishing, it seems even criminals have decided to tap into the 'social networking and group cooperation' element of Web 2.0 and have therefore created their own online communities, help centers (if you can call them that).

The latest development is a site called Loads.cc. It's a network of hacked personal computers that can distribute data-stealing malicious software, providing cyber crooks with a ready-made tool! For a small fee, Loads.cc will take whatever malware you provide and inject it into a pre-selected number of PCs already compromised. What's the world coming too!

Criminals evolve as our technology tools mature; and the more critical online communication and information exchange becomes, the more dangerous Web 2.0, and soon Web 3.0, fraud will be.

Apply common sense to protect your Internet presence on social networking and sharing sites. Regarding worms, just don't accept messages/content/links from people you don't know, and be suspicious if someone you do know is sending you something really strange, his/her account has probably been hacked! If it looks like a scam, it is a scam. It's as simple as that!

zanasser@gmail.com

Too much gadget power!

Every once in a while, a friend of mine will come up to me and ask if getting a Core 2 Duo 2GHz laptop, with a big screen and the full complement of multimedia features, is a good idea, although it costs around JD1,500 ($2100).

When we start talking about his/her uses for such a computer, it becomes apperant that a JD500 laptop, with a processor of half the power and lower specifications will be enough!

There seems to be a problem nowadays. Users don’t buy their hardware to meet their needs, but instead end up with what I call ‘hardware overkill’.

Take digital cameras as an example. Really, a 5 megapixel camera with proper auto focus and advanced night-time shooting should be more than enough. Why on earth would any regular person want a 12 megapixel camera! Are you planning to blow up your photos into wall unit size?

Let’s also look at mobile phones for minute. Almost every person I know who carries a Nokia or Sony Ericcsson advanced and expensive multimedia phone is barely using the processor power in hand. It’s just that they ‘liked the way the phone looks’, and of course they want to get the latest. But, if all you’re going to do with your JD500 phone is the basic functionality offered by a JD70, you would be mad to spend more!

Certain ‘emotional blackmail’ products like the iPhone take this to ridiculous proportions. Users who haven’t even begun to explore their iPhone 1 have already ditched it for the all new iPhone 2!

The same applies to iPods. Do you really need to carry 4,000 songs and use a touch-screen? Aren’t 500 songs enough, and what wrong with normal buttons?

Even gaming systems have gone crazy. Most kids can still get loads of fun out of their JD100 PS2, which still gets all the major games releases, and there’s little more than sharper graphics and sounds on offer from the JD350 PS3.

Maybe I need a dose of reality? If people were reasonable about their technology gadgets, there wouldn’t be an industry for new high-tech products.

What marketers understand is that buyers build an ‘emotional’ bond with a gadget or electronic device, and it becomes both about functionality and status.

But, really, what’s the use of status when you don’t have a bank account that can maintain your current, average status anyway!

zanasser@gmail.com