The Phonies! The Smartphone Wars awards (week ending 17 September 2010)

Submitted by brian s hall on 17 September, 2010 - 00:25

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All of us, I suspect, have a little Carol Bartz doppelganger on our shoulder, quickly able to pick apart what's wrong with those around us yet utterly incapable of understanding -- of seeing -- our own faults, shortcomings, weaknesses.

Just as Ms Bartz still has no idea what Yahoo is, or was, or could be, despite her keen understanding of Google's problems, Appe's problems, the Valley's problems, so do we often fail to see the big picture for the real-time data stream that draws us in like bugs. Which sounds sad, I know, but right now, my mouthy little Carol Bartz doppelganger has convinced me to ignore all that and let her MC this week's Phonies!

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome everyone's favorite current Yahoo CEO...

Yeah, yeah, give me the mic and just shut the hell up. This is war baby. War. Time to say fuck it, grab them bitches by the balls, stick your finger in their anus, gizz on their face and shit on their hopes and dreams! Let's get it on!

Big Bang award

$RIMM

RIM? Are you kidding me? They're doomed. Everyone knows that. Doomed on the high-end, doomed on the low-end, Microsoft will buy them for parts...

Look, Nokia got everyone together in London this week, for three days of love and peace and good times, then the market whipped out the brown acid and shit on Nokia's stock. Like they do every week. At least RIM beat the market's quarterly estimates for revenues, margins and new subscribers. That's Canada 1 Finland 0.

Now, don't cry. Tell you what. After this is over, I'll take you out for a nice piece of cod.

$NOK $RIMM

Woolly Mammoth award

Skyhook Wireless

Skyhook Wireless? Who the fuck is Skyhook Wireless?

Oh, well, I'll just read what's written down for me.

Skyhook has much experience and several patents for technology that uses WiFi and GPS (and magic) in your smartphone to determine your location.

As you may have heard, when everyone has a smartphone and social networking and location-based services and real-time broadband interactivity are a constant reality, the knowledge a Skyhook has could be rather useful. Valuable, in fact. Extremely valuable. So valuable that Yahoo wants nothing to do with them.

So valuable that Apple broke up with them and decided to build their own -- and retain full control. The crafty soulless at Google -- allegedly -- decided to require vendors like Motorola who want Android, that if they really want Android, they better ditch Skyhook and go all the way with Google.

Given that kind of bitchslap, it's hard to believe that Skyhook has long for this world.

Dinosaur Crossing award

IE9

What problem is this solving?

What future does it have?

Who the fuck cares?

Microsoft is doomed. Stupid bitches.

Gray Powell award

LG Electronics

The smartphone is the computer. The future. Giant electronics and gadget maker LG knows this. Google has given them Android. The world awaits.

And still these fucks can't make a decent smartphone. No wonder they're stuck at 1% market share. And that's with a billion dollars to play with. That's not incompetence, that's a concsious choice, an act of suicide. You got to want to fuck up to have everything LG has and still suck at a market that is growing like a weed all over the planet.

Or maybe they'd just rather spend their time watching porn?