[16 May 2012: Brian: Re-posting this from 9 weeks ago. It still hasn't sunk in with analysts. I have written previously that most analysts continue to miss the potential of iOS. It has the very real possibility of reaching a 1 billion device install base. Easy. What's more, it is a ecosystem. An ecosystem that *competes* with the web. Apple's ultimate goal is far bigger than you imagine.]

In its last full quarter, Apple sold 37 million iPhones. CEO Tim Cook said it was a "decent quarter." 

Which is Tim Cook-speak for 'you got punkd bitch'. 

But Cook also said he expected the global market for smartphones to reach 1 billion units by 2015. I think Cook is lying here. In my original 2016 predictions, I predicted a billion smartphones sold annually by 2016. That turned out to be wildly conservative. Probably, the world will start running through a billion smartphones every year in 2013.

Cook -- and Apple -- are gunning for a very large share of those. I expect they will get it, too. 

The question is: how many?

I ask not to guage Apple's success or determine how much $AAPL stock I should purchase. Rather, at what point do we have a platform?

A web-alternative platform?

I'm completely serious. At what point do Apple users not need "the web" at all?

As regular readers can attest, I have little patience for and will call out those who run -- or fall victim to -- VC-led pump and dump schemes.

Michael Arrington and his sycophants, for example, put a small amount of money into an app no one has, Highlight, for example, talk it up to their friends in the VC-funded blogosphere, get a million page views or so, create an artificial demand for 'ambient mobile location based sensory' technology, or whatever the hell it's called and then -- wisely -- sell their stake to some big company, like Facebook.

Because, really, it was never about building a business. 

That's too damn hard.

This is the scenario I expect to happen and it's getting played out over and over. Fast, easy money split between the VCs, VC-funded tech press, and the developers, who wind up with a decent chunk of change and a nice titled position at Big Tech Co.

It is because of this scenario that so many inside and outside Silicon Valley believe that the region is thinking small and doing small. And not in a good way.

They have a point. But, they are missing a larger picture. There is real potential for "small" apps and services to have a massive impact on people, on work, health, social media and more.

Only, because it's happening on smartphones, for example, the true potential can be overlooked.

Instagram has 27 million registered user. Path has over half a million. Yelp receives over 30 million visitors a month. That's close to how many watch the most popular show in America, American Idol. 

These are "small" apps, with a limited purpose. True. But they expose a much larger opportunity. They are part of a thriving eocsystem -- built on iOS instead of TCP/IP or HTML, for example. Consider the tens of millions, possibly hundreds of millions, who regularly (dailiy) use Facebook or Twitter on their iPhones. 

I think for all the talk of Apple's success, iPad and iPhone's success, that people still don't understand its potential. iOS is a web rival. Actually, considering how easy it is to find, receive and enjoy books, music, television shows and movies, iOS is superior to the web in so many ways.

But it's catching up to it in scope, as well. While "the web" likely will always have far more users, iOS will still have hundreds of millions, possibly a billion users, and they will use iOS for far more and far more often. 

A lot of the apps and functions on iOS remain "small" or silly or don't much solve a problem as alleviate a minor need. But this is how it begins. 

[9 November 2011: Brian: Cheers for Brian, no? I wrote this barely 2 weeks ago. Now Adobe has killed development on Flash for smartphones. I told you *from the beginning* that having Flash on your device was *absolutely not* a selling point. A few Android fanboys argued otherwise. What say they now? Listen to Brian, all.]

It's the iPad! Only better! Cause it has flash!

Probably the nicest honest thing you can say about the Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet is that sales have been underwhelming. Despite creating a device that *borrows* extremely heavily from Apple's iPad.

And runs on the (more popular) Android platform.

Which is open!

And has Flash!

I've detailed the reasons why (pre Kindle Fire) no one will buy a tablet that is not iPad and why no one should buy a tablet that is not iPad. No point in going over this yet again, particularly after having been proven so completely right. 

Rather, I will talk about flash. Or, more specifically, about those who talked up flash as a selling point. Which was dumb. And because Apple so publicly dissed Flash, the Apple haters became all the more fervent in their demand that flash be included in non Apple tablets.

And the weak, possibly dumb people running marketing for Playbook and Xoom and Galaxy Tab and others, charged with determining market requirements, fell trap once more to the grand fallacy that the Apple haters proffer:

that they are a market that matters

Steve Jobs and Apple have famously said they don't do market research. This isn't entirely true. Steve Jobs and Apple have famously said that they build products that they want to use, and not products based on what a bunch of people tell them. This is mostly true. The late Steve Jobs and the present Apple Inc. rarely talk about what they are doing. This is both true and good.

Because, I suspect that if they started talking up what they were doing, planning, working on, thinking about, then there would be no end of loud-angry demands to include or not include feature X and service Y and techology Zed. Which would probably do nothing more than throw Apple far off their game, just as it has thrown the also-rans off theirs. 

My mother has used an iPad. She has zero knowledge what Flash is or does. I have let children, who have never heard of 'Flash' use my iPad.

It works. Great. Easily. Powerfully. Just as Apple said, any benefits of Flash would be far outweighed by its harm to the overall user experience. And Apple continues to sell iPads by the millions. Meanwhile, Tabs can't be found, Xoom appears to be offering a buy anything get one free special, and Playbook, like the TouchPad, is soon to appear in the bins along with the $5 DVDs at the WalMart, I suspect.

Because these companies listened; only, not to the market, but to a very small group of haters and fanboys. HOW DARE APPLE NOT INCLUDE FLASH! CLOSED! BAD! MARKETING! ANd rather than building the best product for the market -- or for a market that did not quite yet exist -- they built a product to satiate the rapatious demands of a tiny tiny group of buyers who, let's face it, weren't going to buy the tablet anyway.

Apple haters my be loud. They may take to social media and find an echo chamber, but they are a blip on a niche market. Listen to them at your peril.

Bet against Apple, sure. But I wouldn't bet on the haters. They won't make you any money.

Give Brian some sugar. A day after I wrote about the primacy of apps, the big tech blogs and major media promote the 'rise of the app'. From my earlier post:

The desktop metaphor ruled the PC. The app metaphor rules -- and will continue to rule for years at least -- the smartphone.

As the world is going mobile, rapidly, the mobile has already gone app. Apps replace search. Apps replace services. Apps simply work better. The app can be optimized for the device, for the screen, for the hardware, for the functions.

The web, as we know it, can never match the app. Instead of a "Google search" app there should be, say, ten Google search apps -- spanning various important search needs.

The smartphone is the new personal computer and the app powers the smartphone. It will be thus for at least the next five years. Apple will likely *extend* its lead over its rivals during this time.

Today, a study reveals the growing importance of apps! 

Via TechCrunch:

With smartphone penetration now at 50 percent in the U.S., the world of apps is seeing a knock-on effect in their popularity: according to a new report from Nielsen, mobile consumers are downloading more apps than ever before, with the average number of apps owned by a smartphone user now at 41 — a rise of 28 percent on the 32 apps owned on average last year.

But at the same time, there are hints of people possibly approaching a limit to how much they might use them: despite the rise in app numbers, the amount of time that people are spending in apps has remained essentially flat: collectively, they are being used for 39 minutes per day today, compared to 37 minutes in 2011.

Nielsen also notes that apps seem to be taking a bit of time away from mobile web usage (perhaps this is where the extra two minutes comes from…): it says that users are using apps 10 percent more than the mobile web, compared to last year.

As I wrote before this study came out:

iPhone quickly went from revolutionary computing device to app phone. This is the equivalent of the PC embracing the desktop metaphor. It is the primary consensual hallucination that we all accept and embrace for personal computing.

The app is the means with which we access the data, services, hardware and functions of our smartphone. The smartphone is our personal computer. You must build for this reality. You must accept this reality. Once again, like Moses coming down from the mountain, Apple brought us the singular digital metaphor for computing and interactivity.  

Worse for Apple's competition is the fact that, even today, in mid-2012, Apple does not simply make the best smartphone -- it makes the best phone and the best platform for apps. It's lead in profits and popularity should widen. Android was *not* optimized for apps. Nor Blackberry. Nor even Windows Phone. Think of a PC company in 1996, say, that didn't get desktop and folders correctly. 

From AllThingsD:

Judging by two of the most hyped deals in recent Silicon Valley history — Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram for $1 billion and Zynga’s acquisition of Draw Something for $200 million — it seems like a foregone conclusion that the era of the app has arrived.

And some new numbers from Nielsen that chronicle the rise of “AppNation” on Android and iOS between March 2011 and March 2012 back up that notion. The study shows the average number of apps per smartphone has jumped from 32 apps to 41, and growth in time spent on app usage outpacing the growth in mobile Web usage on smartphones by a hefty margin.

With respect to deals like Instagram, you must understand: an app is not an app. The app phone, particularly the iPhone, is a platform. The new web. The app is like a site on the new web. 

This makes it easier for people to comprehend, though we still cannot know just how the monetization of content and the delivery of data and engagement will fundamentally change in this era of the app.

Last week, I asked in that way of mine, "will the big tech blogs ever call Tony Hsieh an asshole?"

We have our answer.

No.

Probably he doesn't deserve such a label. If he did, his PR firm will certainly never tell.

The reason I continue to expose the inter-connectedness of the VC funded blogs and the stories, businessses, people and products they focus on is because it reveals what a *non-meritocracy* Silicon Valley has become. The big blogs take the big money from the rich insiders. They promote the myth, build the buzz, and cheer when their latest non-revenue generating venture is purchased for big money.

While you remain some nerdy Jean Valjean hungry for crumbs.

The incestuous, tightly connected relationship between big blogs, serving as PR firms, and venture capitalists, who have become masters of the fast flip, further reveals, dear reader, that there are many gatekeepers you must pay before your grand idea or wonderful business gets the press it so richly deserves.

As I've said many times: there is a reason why rich insiders fund the big tech blog media sites -- despite the fact that they will *never* earn a acceptable payout on their investment.

Because they are getting paid in so many other ways.

In my post last week, I noted that Tony Hsieh, head of Zappos, before he sold it to Amazon, is an "investor" in PandoDaily.

He also employs PandoDaily's founder's spouse.

A writer for PandoDaily is launching an online magazine. With funding from Mr Hsieh. Possibly, all its funding. 

Mr Hsieh's *other businesses* are "paid sponsors" of this funded online magazine.

That buys a lot of good press. Literally.

Today, in PandoDaily, from the founder:

She was, of course, talking about Zappos, and it was clear by listening to the ensuing conversation that this woman works at Zappos for one big reason. It’s not the discounts on shoes or the crazy headquarters with different noisemakers on every aisle or the almost cultish, feel good all hands meetings. It’s because she’s insanely, ridiculously proud to work at the place that made insanely expensive customer service that almost no company could justify into a $1 billion exit. She lives her life looking for reasons to brag about that very fact to complete strangers.

That alone is an astounding fact, if you think about the trend corporate America was on with outsourced, voice recognition software and endless phone tree call centers just a few years ago. And Zappos isn’t alone. Increasingly, middle America is reclaiming the call center. Don’t call them “fly-over states” anymore, you coastal snobs. Thousands of people in America’s heartland may no longer be farming or building cars, but thousands more are making all of our lives way better every day call by call.

Something well beyond Zappos is happening here. And it’s similar to the move from commerce mega sites to curated content-driven experiences. It’s not too dissimilar from our own ethos at PandoDaily that page views are not what build a big business, rather seemingly crazy investments in what we consider to be good work does. It’s a move from a slavish reliance on machines and metrics towards things that humans are uniquely good at, things that can not be automated. It’s a reaction against the phone tree, voice-recognition software, the algorithm and any too-good-to-be-true shortcut that companies embraced over the last five to ten years.

Is it too much to say that the outsourcing wave was wrong, that the business pendulum is swinging back en masse to expensive investments in making customers happy? Probably. (Unfortunately.) But these four companies — and doubtlessly others like them — are setting an important precedent in how short-sighted the outsourcing and automated customer service boom was.

Zappos, GoDaddy, Qualtrics and Braintree have proven that spending money on customer service isn’t throwing money away — it’s investing in the business. Done well, good customer service is the difference between a mediocre business and a great one. You can get shoes anywhere, and Zappos’ site design has never been that amazing; its entire success is wrapped up in treating people well. GoDaddy doesn’t view its call center as a “cost center,” arguing it has actually generated more than $100 million in annual revenues. And Qualtrics — and loads of other new enterprise companies like them — have effectively substituted these call centers for expensive sales people and marketers.

Everything in business moves in cycles. If this is the beginning of a move back, it’ll be a temporary one. At some point, skimping on customer service will again be on the vanguard of cost-cutting. But until then, let’s enjoy the pampering.

Oh, and Zappos.

Oh, and those proud folk in flyover states are doing god's work by answering your calls. Go pat them on the head.

Oh, and no mention anywhere in/around the post that I can tell of the relationship between PandoDaily and Zappos's moneyman.

Will your business get this type of glowing, gushing coverage? Will your awesome commitment to customer service get singled out?

We already know the answer.

You people have no idea. None. I bang these blog posts out while boiling water for the day's ramen. I write a post in the time it takes Justin Verlander to shake off a sign.

(Oh, but still donate -- I'm killing myself here, just for you.)

Writing, however, writing a novel -- that shit is hard. Trust me. Hard. Here's a taste of the daily grind, from PJ Reece:

This morning I awake to a new schedule—START NOVEL. 

No shower, no coffee, don’t even get dressed.  Don’t clean up the desk.  No email, no surfing blogs, no Facebook or Twitter.  No opening the snail mail, no Globe and Mail.  No logging on to the Internet, period. 

I have a speech to write—forget it.  Another blog post—not now.  Another eBook in the works—later!  Just man up to the blank screen, PJ, and thrill to the experience of not knowing what’s going to happen.

My finger tips are moving… oh, look!  On the screen… “The dead don’t care…”

My novel has begun!

Since I almost certainly will be using an iPhone this year and next, at least, I hope I am wrong about this though I think not. 

Via Parislemon:

I haven’t heard anything specifically about this [offering turn-by-turn navigation], but my guess is that Apple has been hard at work on it for some time. The fact that the maps update is coming seems like a good sign.

They know this is one of the remaining “low-hanging fruits”, as John Gruber calls them, that they can add to iOS. It’s also an area where Android is, without question, winning.

Do not get your hopes up, dear reader.

Mapping and navigation are not Apple strengths. Improved mapping and navigation functions can better support app developers and social media platforms on iOS. But for the most part, mapping is only marginally connected to Apple's larger strategy and business model.

Let's get confirmation that Apple will be replacing Google Maps in iPhone, and that it will offer something TOTALLY AWESOME in its place, before we start hoping for free, embedded, Apple-y turn-by-turn support.

My assumption is that this will remain a rather expensive add-on service long after iPhone 5 (or whatever it is called) is released.