[quote author=“sleepygeek”]iPhone has reached 1M sold 8 times as fast as iPod. So it should take about a year to reach 100M

Considering the EU is comparable in population to the US, I can see both markets growing in tandem. I’m note sure if we will see 100 million units sold by the end of June next year, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see 50 million units sold by the end of September ‘08.

Apple will not compete in the cell phone market.  It will change the cell phone market and perhaps make it obsolete.  I am very experienced in various applications of various flavors of Unix.  OS X is Unix.  Unix kernels can be scaled to run any device from a wrist watch to a robotic auto factory.  It’s an industrial class system.  Windows is a hobby system that’s been patched and souped up to try to match the performance of PCs as they’ve developed from 8K of RAM and CPUs running at 2 MHz to what they are today. 

Conversly, what PCs are today, in the Windows world at least, has largely been limited by Microsoft’s “toy” operating system.  Intel partnered with Apple in part to have somewhere to go with their multicore, 64 bit, low power, mobile-oriented chips.  Their R & D was dying on the vine because Microsoft was limiting what PC manufacturers could, in terms of usefulness, put in a machine.

I think it’s safe to say that there is NO ONE PERSON at Microsoft these days who knows how Windows works.  Instead of improvements Microsoft is concentrating on locking down content and locking in customers.

The computing and CE world are converging and mobility is the key.  Everything Apple makes is oriented toward mobility.  The days of the desktop computer may be about over.  Cellular technology is another example of an old technological paradigm that’s obsolete.  The whole idea of a telephone that doesn’t need wires presupposes that one needs a TELEPHONE to start with.  Likewise, television programming delivered by a cable company and TV network in real time is an old system trying to stay alive and remain relevant.

The future is not the preservation of old systems through the patching together of various technological bits and pieces.  If Apple followed that line of reasoning they’d have designed a harness for the iPod with which you could attach the cell phone of your choice to it instead of designing and marketing the iPhone.

Cell phones, cable companies, even telephone companies and TV networks will be in the same class as 8 track tapes and CDs within 5 years.  The change is accelerating and Apple is not riding the wave, but creating it.  Wireless will replace the cable, fiber, and broadcast monopolies.  That will open up true competition and provide de facto deregulation of the communications/CE industries.  Even now we are beginning to see the possibility of direct sales from artists to consumers via services like iTunes.  That’s what has the recording companies in a panic.  They can see the writing on the wall that they, along with the telephone industries (both wired and cellular), the TV and radio networks, the cable companies, newspapers, even book publishers are about to become extinct.  Companies like Apple and Google will fill the void…In less than 10 years…much less.