Raven Zachary

Raven Zachary is President of Small Society, working with big brands, established companies, investors, and startups on iPhone strategy and product development. Raven directed the Obama '08 for iPhone application for the Obama Campaign, and has worked with companies such as Whole Foods Market, Zipcar, Clif Bar, and Air New Zealand on iPhone application initiatives. He is the founder of iPhoneDevCamp, a not-for-profit iPhone developer conference. Raven is also a Contributing Analyst with The 451 Group, an IT industry analyst firm and works closely with O'Reilly Media on iPhone and mobile technology related events and coverage. He is regularly quoted by the press about the iPhone market and is a frequent conference speaker on the topic. Raven’s iPhone pursuits can be viewed at smallsociety.com and he can be followed on Twitter, @ravenme.

Who's Winning the Smartphone Wars?

The short answer – Microsoft and Nokia are slipping, RIM and Apple are gaining. It’s too early to tell with Google. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Last week, UK-based analyst firm Canalys, released its findings on smartphone market share based on Q2 2009 unit shipments (see “Smart phones defy slowdown“). Before sharing Canalys’ findings, it’s important to understand how an evaluation of market share and profits relate to the players involved.

The Next Wave of iPhone Apps

This is the biggest week of the year for iPhone users, as Apple released iPhone OS 3.0 on Wednesday and will be launching the new iPhone 3GS on Friday. The iPhone OS 3.0 Software Update provides a significant number of enhancements to the operating system including spotlight search, cut, copy, & paste, voice memos, support for landscape keyboard usage in Mail, Messages, Notes, and Safari, MMS and tethering for carriers that support these features (AT&T late summer for MMS, tethering TBD), and dozens of other improvements.

Palm's Third Act

2009 marks another year when Macworld and CES are scheduled for the same week. It'll be a great week for product announcements, but it'll also be a week of information overload. RSS feeds will overflow with gadget coverage. For those of us covering technology, it presents some logistical challenges, too. Which conference to attend? I'll be at Macworld again this…

10,000 iPhone Apps

Two services that track the iPhone App Store – AppShopper and 148Apps, announced on Saturday that there have been over 10,000 iPhone applications released on the US App Store. The number of currently available applications is just shy of 10,000 due to discontinued apps and a few that have been pulled by Apple (e.g. trademark disputes, terms of service violations,…

Asynchronous Multiplayer Mobile Gaming

With all the news on Friday about Apple's release of iPhone OS 2.2, there was another iPhone news item that got less attention than it deserved. Two young iPhone developers, Danielle Cassley and Jason Citron, released the sequel to their much-acclaimed iPhone puzzle game, Aurora Feint. Aurora Feint II: The Arena (iTunes link) introduces the concept of 'casual asynchronous massively…

iPhone is the Top Selling Consumer Phone in the U.S.

The third calendar quarter of 2008 (Apple F4Q08) was a record for iPhone sales. 6.9 million iPhones were sold from July through September, more than the 6.1 million iPhones sold in prior quarters combined. Steve Jobs mentioned during Apple's most recent quarterly earnings call (transcript) that the company had even beat out Research in Motion (RIM), which sold 6.1 million…

New iPhoneLive Conference in November

Please welcome Raven Zachary, an iPhone maven and the chair for our new conference. He will be blogging on Radar about iPhone and mobile issues. — Brady I am pleased to announce the launch of a new O'Reilly Media conference focused on the emerging iPhone ecosystem – iPhoneLive. Apple's iPhone is having a profound impact on the mobile telephony and…