Tomorrow marks yet another Apple WWDC. Another day surrounded by the anticipation of a new iPhone. I expect this year is more than a landmark hardware launch, though. This will likely be the year Apple makes a serious attempt at the cloud, an area of the market where Apple is starting to fall seriously behind Google and the Android OS.

First off, the new iPhone is a big deal, not just for us but for Apple as well. The phone leak was so big to Apple, in fact, that it refused to invite Gizmodo to the event in light of the investigation. The newest iteration of the iPhone will be the most advanced phone to market. Though we don’t know specifics, it looks as though the phone will support video conferencing, capture HD video, offer a faster processor, more memory, and of course, iPhone OS 4.

It’s OS 4 that will help Apple catch up to Android. The latest Android updates include support for streaming music from your desktop to your phone. It also allows you to push websites, applications, and maps and directions straight to your phone. Apple and the iPhone are way behind in cloud support. The best you have there is MobileMe, which requires a subscription and really only allows you to find your phone if you lose it. Apple’s Lala acquisition could mean good things here.

The one thing you shouldn’t expect tomorrow is a Verizon iPhone. Though we’ve heard rumors since the iPhone launched, it’s unlikely we’ll see anything this year, or even next. I was wholly convinced that we’d get a Verizon phone around the time my 3GS contract expired but recent Verizon comments have made it clear we won’t see one soon.

On the whole, tomorrow is Apple’s chance to position itself in the market. When the 3GS launched it was clearly the best phone on the market. Things aren’t so clear anymore, and the Android devices coming in the near future hold a lot of advantages for tech-savvy buyers. It’s going to take a lot for Apple to outperform the latest version of Android. We’ll see if they have it when Jobs takes the stage for the keynote at 10 PST tomorrow.

Photo Credit: Adam Jackson / Flickr

I’ve spent most of my tech reading time over the past few days reviewing the world’s reactions to Google I/O. Google announced some pretty cool stuff for Android, and the company clearly has Apple in its sights when it comes to market share. Even more interesting to me, though, was that the “Microsoft” didn’t seem to be on anyone’s mind. John Gruber put together a great read on the subject, so I’ll defer to him here.

As Gruber sees it, Google is taking its gigantic, Android-shaped bite out of Microsoft’s pie, not Apple’s. Google is the licensed OS player because it licenses Android for free, not on a fee-per-unit basis. That says nothing of Microsoft’s crazy volume requirements to turn a profit. The company currently charges something between $8 and $12 per handset. When you hold just 6.8 percent of the world market share, that license fee is a joke.

The volume game isn’t necessarily where you find the profits, either. Nokia sells a LOT more units than Apple, but Apple still makes a better profit. Microsoft is in an absolutely awful position to make a dent in the market. Hell, they still haven’t even launched a competitive platform. Microsoft was already too late when the iPhone launched three years ago. I have to thank John Gruber for this Ballmer quote about the iPhone launch, which I had never seen before:

“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60 percent or 70 percent or 80 percent of them, than I would to have 2 percent or 3 percent, which is what Apple might get.”

Well, Steve, I have bad news. The iPhone OS was just reported at 15.2 percent of the global market share. That 80 percent market share you were hoping for? Yeah, that’s never going to happen.

Source: Daring Fireball

According to the most recent AdMob stats, the Android platform has surpassed the iPhone’s web traffic in the US for the month of March. It’s a strange statistic, considering that AdMob is one, in the process of being picked up by Google and, two, reporting data based on ad traffic. I’m not trying to suggest that Android users are bigger suckers than their iPhone-toting counterparts, but it isn’t exactly the most accurate method on earth for analyzing web traffic.

Still, it is a method – probably the best we have – and by that method Android has pulled ahead. The iPhone is still ahead worldwide, but while it may see a domestic jump this June with the launch of the new iPhone, I can’t help feeling like Android will keep gaining ground. A lot of people really love the departure from the Apple platform, and I don’t think that’s likely to change with new iPhone hardware. There’s also the simple matter of variety – Android has it, the iPhone doesn’t. If you like the iPhone OS but don’t like the hardware, tough shit. With Android you at least have some options.

Source: Business Wire

Despite slow sales growth over the past three months, the iPhone is still fresh in the minds of most smartphone users. So fresh that a lot of them wish they owned Apple’s handset instead of their own. A new study from market research firm Crowd Science shows that 40 percent of Blackberry users will be switching to an iPhone when their current plans are up.

It’s not just the iPhone. Some 32 percent of Blackberry users said they would switch out for a Nexus One when the time came. The real trouble, it seems, is RIM’s platform. While Android and Apple’s iPhone OS have matured into serious entertainment platforms, RIM has tried to rally a stalwart defense of its corporate clientele. Oddly enough, that defense has looked like offering more of the same that made the Blackberry a success in a pre-iPhone world.

It’s already too late for RIM to turn this ship around. The company needs a new operating system and a completely different pitch, neither of which are likely to happen in the next six months. By then the defectors will really start to hurt. Don’t bet on Android or iPhone users heading RIM’s direction, either. Some 90 percent of those users plan to stick with their current platform.

It’s funny how one success story can send the world into a frenzy. The iPhone has been an undisputed success, gobbling up market share by the full percentage point. It’s not unstoppable, though. As the latest comScore stats show, actually, sales growth is nearly nonexistent.

Let’s start with the good news, though. Apple is sitting at 25% market share – an incredible number for such a young presence in the market. This is the number that had everyone scared. The bad news for Apple is that it has stopped growing. Relative to the market, the last three months have only been up .3% for Apple. Compare that to RIM who’s up 1.7% on its 41.3% market share in October of last year. Android more than doubled in the last three months, granted only from 2.8% to 7.1% but that is still massive growth.

Part of the problem is no doubt that Apple has conditioned the world to believe every summer will bring a new iPhone. If that’s not the case in 2010, we might see some very stagnant iPhone numbers before year’s end.

Source: comScore