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It’s been a week since Apple’s latest product announcement. Reaction to the announcement has been mixed, with many enthusiasts calling the new product a “disappointment”, or even “failure”.

We, at SkratchBoard, has an entirely different perspective. We believe that the iPad will cause an inflection in the industry to fundamentally transform the form factor of what most users think of as a desktop or laptop computer. But why now? Many tablet devices have already come and gone in the past 10 years. Why do we think iPad will be different?

There are several reasons for this:

1. Mass adoption of touch computing. iPhone has paved the way to familiarize many users with touch computing. Although Apple is certainly not the first company to make a touch product, it’s difficult to argue that it’s the first one with massive success.
2. Web as application platform. The web is showing no sign of weakening as powerful application platform. Most of what users need today can be accessed through the web browser. That means the chances for a new OS to success is increased as long as it has a great web browser and delivers a delightful user experience. Sounds like the iPad.
3. Being locked down might be a good thing. Although many enthusiasts find the iPhone/iPad application model to be too closed, the fact is that the PC model is probably too open for most users. If you know a couple of non-tech savvy people, you may notice that for some reason their computers are ALWAYS broken. The simple reason is that a PC gives them too many opportunities to contract viruses, malware, screw up the registry. Compared that with iPhone/iPad, it’s pretty difficult to screw up the system. And it still provides close to 100% of what an average user needs.
4. It’s all about the Apps. The applications on the tablet form factor will make or break the success of the product. Apple is in very good shape, because not only is it enabling 140,000 apps to immediately be runnable on the iPad, it is also bringing in the same contingency of developers onto the iPad platform.

It looks like Google will soon be putting out its own vision of a tablet device as well. There will be a flood of tablet devices coming to the market in the next couple of years, further legitimizing this device category.

Are you going to buy the iPad when it comes out in March?

It’s no secret by now that Apple has had a smashing quarter. Although the headline for many news articles seems to be “Apple earnings grew by 50%”, that statement is not accurate because Apple is now using a different set of accounting rules in reporting their earnings.

Regardless, Apple still had a fantastic quarter. iPhone shipments doubled from last year to 8.7 million units, but some enthusiastic analysts probably found that number a bit disappointing given their predictions of 10M+ units. What we found most interesting is that the iPhone makes up 36% of Apple’s revenue and is the biggest piece of the pie.

Well, all eyes are on the Apple tablet device now. There is no shortage of rumors floating on the Internet right now and the hype is at its all-time high. Steve is supposedly to have said that this device is “the most important thing” he has ever done. The iPhone is already pretty damn game-changing if you ask us. We can’t even begin to imagine what an even more important device would look like.

We really can’t wait. Is it Jan. 27th yet?

After all the hype and speculations around Google’s new phone, the company made the official announcements yesterday. There has already been tons of reviews of the new phone, so we won’t repeat that material here. If you are interested, Engadget has an excellent review here.

What we are here to talk about is what does the Nexus One mean for Google and the Android Community?

Here are our main thoughts:

• Nexus One is largely a yawner as far as the phone goes. Sure, it’s got some nice updates and is worthy of the title "Best Android Phone yet", but it is definitely not a major breakthrough.
• Google’s goal with Nexus One is NOT to compete with the iPhone. In fact, I would go as far as to say Google doesn’t really care if Nexus One doesn’t sell that well. More importantly, Google is using Nexus One to give Android a better brand and to serve as a reference design to kick the other OEMs into making better Android devices.
• Google’s move to sell the phones direct to consumers unlocked is very interesting. This lays the ground for future Google phones to be sold direct to consumers.

So what’s the coming breakthrough from Google?

We are not saying Google is not doing anything breakthrough. We are just saying that they are not doing it yet with Nexus One. Here is the killer scenario that Apple, mobile operators and the whole industry would fret:

Google makes a first-class smartphone that has Google Voice and Gizmo5 deeply integrated into the dialer. The phone will support voice over data network primarily via WiFi and Whitespace, but may fall back to cellular network. Google sells this phone directly to consumers over the web unlocked. This scenario would be killer because users would be able to cut their subscription fee significantly (up 80% to 90%), still get an awesome experience with using a smartphone and arguably better with Google Voice’s features.

We don’t think Google is too far from delivering this.

It’s always fun to look back at the predictions that we made a year ago and see how the world really turned out. We are pleased to say that we are correct in 4 out of the 5 predictions that we made.

1. Mobile phones will see their first major form factor breakthrough since the iPhone. (Incorrect)

Ok, this is the only one we got wrong. One year later, we haven’t seen any major breaktrhoughs in form factor for smartphones. Droid with its physical sliding keyboard can hardly count as a breakthrough. In fact, we feel that more and more phones are just doing the "me too" thing and have a purely touchscreen keyboard.

2. An Updated Kindle will arrive, legitimizing the 3rd device category. (Correct)

Yup, the Kindle DX did arrive, and eBook is getting huge. Not only is the Kindle the most gifted item on Amazon ever, Amazon also announced that it has sold more Kindle e-books this holiday season than physical books for the first time. That’s a big deal. Barnes & Nobles launched its own Nook e-book, Sony updated its line of e-book readers, and many other lower profile names are also jumping into this space. Of course, the long-rumored Apple tablet device is also said to be a great e-book reader, but we will have to see about that.

Can’t really deny that e-book readers are now mainstream. For 2010, we expect color e-book readers to make an appearance, faster e-book readers and prices to drop.

3. Tracking down your friends will become easier. (Correct)

Loopt, Google Latitude, Glympse, Foursquare and Rummble have all experienced tremendous growth in 2009, thanks to the strong growth of geo-location enabled Smartphones. Now you have so many options to track down where your friends are.

4. Android will gain major traction. (Correct)

By all accounts, this prediction was spot on, and in some ways, exceeded our expectations. 2009 has seen the introduction of over 20 Android based phones, with Android itself quickly evolving over multiple releases. Droid was the highest profile Android phone in 2009, but that’s set to change with the Nexus One in January 2010.

Although the marketshare of Android phones is still relatively small, given most of the phones were introduced towards the end of 2009, the percentage of web traffic from Android phones is huge. Data released by AdMob at the end of November 2009 shows that 20% of web traffic from Smartphones is from Android handsets.

We expect Android to continue to gain market share in 2010 as OEMs continue to push out more handsets. More importantly, we expect to see Android to run on non-phone platforms, such as digital photo frames, universal remotes, and even TVs.

5. iPhone 4G will *NOT* show up. (Correct)

Yup, iPhone 4G definitely did not show up in 2009. But we think that’s set to change in 2010. As the top-tier carriers are migrating to 4G technologies like LTE and WiMax, Apple could very well lead the market in introducing a 4G capable iPhone. It would be a great move to launch a LTE iPhone on Verizon, since Apple’s problem isn’t with the iPhone now as it is with AT&T. However, we think 4G iPhone is probably not ready for a June launch when the next iPhone is expected to be announced. But hey, we can be surprised.

Conclusion

So all in all, we have made 4 correct predictions out of 5. We will aim higher for the 2010 predictions!

For all the procrastinators out there who are still not done with your Christmas shopping, we have rounded up the best gift guides online for you to reduce your shopping pains.

• Engadget’s Holiday Gift Guide
• CNET’s Holiday Tech Guide
• BGR Holiday Mobile Phone Gift Guide
• Wired’s GeekDad Gift Guide

Ok, go get your last-minute shopping done!

ComScore reported that Apple iPhone ownership has surpassed Windows Mobile ownership for the first time in the US, despite Microsoft having many more years of being in the mobile space.

But is anyone really surprised? Both sales and browser usage of iPhone, BlackBerry and Android devices have long surpassed WinMo. As users ditch their old devices and choose new ones, they are not choosing WinMo any longer, so it’s just natural to expect this to happen.

WinMo 7, where are you?

Without a lot of fanfare, Google launched Google Goggles earlier this week in Google Labs. Google Goggles allows users to take a picture of a physical object, and get relevant information about that object almost instantaneously. Right now, you can do this for landmarks, books, business cards, artwork, places, wine and logos.

Google Goggles has the promise to become something HUGE. It currently represents a better way to do contextual search – without having to open a web browser and type in a search query. It makes a lot of sense and plays to Google’s strengths, since it has all of this information indexed already. As image recognition technology improves, this will become a major way for people to obtain contextual information. We have no doubt that one day, you can get all the relevant information you want pertaining to an object you are looking at, without even the need to search or point your smartphone at it. Google is on a good path to be the pioneer in this vision.

Google Goggles is currently only available on Android 1.6+ smartphones, and you can get it directly from Android Market.

So many mobile devices and music players these days use standard USB ports for charging now. Wouldn’t it make sense to start building USB ports into power outlets so we can all charge our devices?

That’s exactly what FastMac thinks and they are shipping the “TruePower UCS Power Outlet with Built-in USB Ports”. You can pre-order today for $9.95 each.

Next time I am moving, I will make sure my new home comes with these babies.

(Thanks, i4)

The holiday season is quickly approaching, and Smartphones are expected to be one of the most popular stocking stuffers this year.

We don’t like being ripped off, so we want to make sure you get the best deal possible this holiday. Most people don’t know this, but one of the cheapest places to buy phones is actually at Amazon. They offer amazing rebates and bring prices down substantially compared to the prices directly from the mobile operators.

Here are some sample prices:

• Motorola DROID at $149.99 – 25% OFF (compare with $199.99 from Verizon)
• Palm Pre at $79.99 – 46% OFF (compare with $149.99 from Sprint)
• BlackBerry Storm2 at $149.99 – 16% OFF (compare with $179.99 from Verizon)

You can see more deals on phones from Amazon here.

Too bad Amazon doesn’t sell the iPhone and you will still need to buy that from Apple or AT&T. Discounts for iPhones? Haven’t heard of them.

We were just about to make a post on the list of upcoming Android Phones, but we came across a pretty up-to-date list on Wikipedia.

Here it is. Why re-invent the wheel?